Visions of Joe
by nuit1962
Summary: Tells the story of a young woman, Evie McBride, the rebellious daughter of a Irish convict deportee to Australia in the late 1800's, whose path crosses that of the Kelly Gang. Inspired by the fabulous Orlando and the real Joe Byrne
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1 – A Line in the Sand**

I had always known Maggie, well I HAVE always known her, since I can remember. Not that we came from the same town, but here everyone is a friend of a friend, that is at least if they are not actually related. When I was a young lass and full of worry about whether I was to marry this boy or that, the full, complicated web of connections developed into a huge net in my mind. Christ, if they were ever to try to write an "and the son of Murphy begat a so-and-so Connelly," like I read in the Bible, well, round here they would soon lose their marbles with the intricacies of it all.

Anyhow, her mother knew my aunt whose daughter once sang in the choir with my neighbour's boy, that sort of thing. Sometimes Maggie would be at our house for what seemed like an entire day while our mothers would be working and talking. As young women, on the rare occasions I got to town, I would see her and we would ask about each other's families and promise to keep in touch, both of us knowing there was precious little chance of that happening even if we had the means to do so. But I always liked her. She had one of those faces—open and warm. Always happy to see you she were and, whilst with some people you might cross the street to avoid another "well how are you?" conversation, with Maggie the warmth of her smile always drew me in.

Thoughts of Maggie, however, rarely popped into my head except when I saw her, there being far more to occupy my mind at home. All of us children had to work on what was laughingly called "our land"—an acre or two of scrub would have been a better description. For the price of a lifelong struggle to earn the rent, we had a strip of land that, it seemed to me, had a grudge against us. We watched as year after year the land in the next valley grew lush and green with the rains, whilst ours seemed to slip down the hill with the greatest of ease, taking the crops and the weeds with it. Once or twice I had asked me Da why we had this plot as opposed to one where we could actually grow something worth having. His answer was almost always the same and involved those "adjectival squatters" who had apparently bought off the government and the police. Since his rantings inevitably caused him to swear, me Ma usually pulled him up and the rest of the explanation was lost.

The seasons passed, some better than others, but always with the threat of eviction or going hungry hanging over our heads. Me older brothers Michael and Jimmy growing strong and independent, me and my sister Mary seeming to do all that they did and more, but without the praise or the freedom, even looking after Sean an extra duty they appeared to take little interest in. Anyhow Michael was working now at the big house with the horses, and Jimmy...well I was never quite sure where Jimmy was nor where that bit of money came from but it seemed like I wasn't supposed to ask.

Somehow I got to age 18 without a clue as to how the world looked outside of our little patch; a few villages left and right, the occasional letter from me ma's family in Ireland, and the one time we got a newspaper borrowed from someone we knew. I read it over and over as well as I could, me Da thought I should learn but it tested us all, details of a world I had no connection with. There was a long article about the invention of the telephone, a new way to communicate that I have to confess I could not understand, and about a place called India. The Queen, Victoria I mean, was to be "Empress of India."

Me Da being a practical type, well that is one way to put it I suppose, leastways he was more inventive as to ways we might make the cash we needed, says out of the blue one day that there is a job going in the bar in town. Looks me in the eye and says, "Well, what do you think girl? I know the owner, do some favours for him. You fancy working for your keep?"

I was on the verge of answering with "what the hell do you think I do everyday out on that land?" for which, big as I was, I would probably still have got a clip for cheeking from me Da and for blaspheming by me Ma, but was cut short by me Ma's wail, "If you think a daughter of mine is going to work in a bar, with the worst ruffians and larrikins that God has seen fit to cast us amoungst, you will have to think again!"

Which of course made up my mind, but it wasn't so plain sailing. Days we had of it—shouting about the money we needed, the family reputation, the moral danger I would be put in, the ways in which we could scrimp some more, and in all the midst of this I heard Maggie's name for the first time in months. "Well Brenda O'Shea has seen fit to let her daughter work there. Maggie, she works there, she can show our lass the ropes."

Me Ma was still none too convinced, but this new argument seemed to hold some sway with her. "Well if you are absolutely sure that there will be no funny business of any kind…."

Within days I was walking into the bar for me first night of proper paid employment, so excited and scared I couldn't think straight. Had put me hair up, taken it down, twisted it round and plaited it over again. As to clothes, well I only had the one tidy set anyhow so that was settled before I started. Me Da have given me a lift down in the cart to town. We hadn't spoken much, though I had caught him glancing at me once or twice sideways, like he had seen something new but didn't want to remark on it and make it real.

"Will you keep your wits about you lassie? I know some of them boys that drink there, don't tell your Ma," he grinned conspiratorially at me, a look I had grown well used to, but it changed in an instant as his soft eyes fell on my face again. "Just don't take any nonsense is all."

He couldn't say it, but he knew, whilst I only had the smallest grasp, that this was going to be the changing of me.

I had wanted to chat with Maggie but we had no time, set to work as soon as I walked in the door it seemed. Me legs were shaking as the owner ran through me duties for the night, which were mainly fetching and carrying. "Well not much of a change there then," I thought to meself with a sort of smile.

Endless trips to the cellar for crates of beers to line the shelves, once the drinking started there wouldn't be much chance for it later. Me and Maggie passing and panting on the stairs. Next we had to wipe the tables from the afternoon session, and then it started—big floods of men arriving in groups, some of the younger yellow fellas still with dust in their hair from the quarry, men still in their work boots, others in their best jackets, and down the other end of the bar at a table all their own a band of coppers, all beards and inquisitive, cruel eyes, that just watched everything in that bar and at the same time challenged each and everyone of us.

Tom O'Leary, the bar owner, standing at the bar, keeping an eye and serving. Maggie there too, but also taking trays of drinks to men seated at the worn tables and chairs that crowded the dance floor. My job, it seemed, was to collect the "empties" as I soon learned to call them and make sure that the taps kept flowing. Often Mr. O'Leary would give me a smile as I passed, me Da must have put in a good word and anyhow, I worked my socks off runnin' up and down those stairs, a matter of pride that there were no empties cluttering up the tables, well except that one down the end. There I visited as rarely as I could. "We have no time for coppers nor those adjectival squatters," I could hear me Da's voice in me head every time I had the misfortune to go near.

Midnight came and went and there was no sign of the place closing, if anything it just got louder. Me feet were aching, and I asked Mr. O'Leary when it would be time for me to go home then, tried to make light of it, like I was just interested and all but his eyes narrowed. I think he said something about how if it was too much for me he'd find someone else, and of course I had to dig fast to cover me tracks and run even faster to make him see I was still up to the job. I remember the feeling though as me Da walked through the door, saying he'd just stop for one before taking me home—I was fair gasping with relief. I watched him talking with Mr. O'Leary, holding his hands out, the only thing I could catch something like, "Oh yes she can…Oh, aye later, next week…It's just her mother, you know, Tom."

Me Da walked beside me out of the place, let me be the "barmaid" I now was 'til we got outside, and big as I was, he picked me up…what did he say now? Ah yes, "I can see those legs of yours are as tired as the day you were five and we walked 10 miles to get grain." A big smile on his face, "I carried you that last mile of it. Not sure I could do that now, my girl, but just to the cart eh? Let yer old Da help you." I can still remember the sting of the tears in me eyes just for him wanting to, and I held on tightly to his neck. I think I was asleep before we got home, the rocking of the cart as good as any cradle.

The week passed so slowly I thought God kept forgetting to wind his fob watch. The dreariness of Tuesday slipped into Wednesday, and the dullness of me life felt like a weight on my shoulders more than all that washing and cleaning and cooking and work in the fields that filled me days. Once me feet had stopped aching and me arms, the only thing left was a sense of the enormity of it all, which sounds daft to say now, but I had never been anywhere like it. Never met so many people, well men, nor seen how it was that they could spend all week working like wombats to make a spare penny or two only to drink it all away. But the main thing that I wanted more of was to be there, to be a grown woman who was there. In truth I didn't feel like one, but I had an idea what she might look like.

At last the day dawned and I got up bright and early, a smile on my face that me Ma remarked upon, "And what has cheered you so much? Like a wet weekend you've been." I daren't tell her it was because I was going to work again, the notion that it was something to be looked forward to rather than tolerated for the sake of the wages would have set her alarm bells ringing good and proper. Instead, I just smiled and was unusually good company for Sean, making the most of the time we spent watering the vegetable patch to run some water through my hair and tie it up like Maggie had done the week before. The stew for supper I couldn't get down fast enough and soon I was climbing in the cart next to me Da. His hand patted mine as we arrived at the bar, "See you later me girl," his eyes barely soothing the butterflies in my gut. I walked in the door, the stale smell of smoke and old beer, as acrid as it was, excited me all the more.

Tom O'Leary was still out bringing supplies as I stepped through the door. Maggie was there, just reaching up to line the beer on the shelf, a broad grin on her face as she saw me. I felt glad, like it hadn't all been a dream, that she remembered me too, and I smiled back. We were good together so that when Mr. O'Leary returned all of a sudden to us chatting and laughing we knew to jump to it and make like we had been working all along.

This week I think I even managed a smile, as soon as the abject horror of doing something wrong subsided, but it was more the case of forgetting. We were so busy it felt like all of the surrounding villages emptied into that one pub. There were fiddles and dancing and all under the disapproving eyes of the coppers who seemed to resent the fact that despite it all, despite everything they, the squatters, and maybe even the Queen herself did to keep us down, we could still enjoy ourselves.

My battle against the empties continued, but it was as hopeless as that story me Da told me of King Canute and those waves, though I did think that whilst I had not ever seen waves, I wasn't sure I would want to stop them- they sounded like magic. Anyhow I was drowning in a sea of glasses and bottles when there was a shout from Mr. O'Leary that I was needed down the other end of the bar. The coppers wanted more beer and there was no sign of Maggie.

"Take these over will ye, lass? That table there." He didn't even need to point, cos I knew where he meant. I seem to remember managing an "aye" and with determination picked up the tray. It was heavier than I thought, and I had to brace me arms to keep it steady, weaving the way across to the table where they sat. The foolishness of neglecting me duties though became as clear as a winter's sky—the table was full, and I cursed in me head as I couldn't put the tray down and do what me legs were telling me to. Instead I had to balance the tray on the edge and trade empties for full glasses, gritting my teeth as if that might stop me hands from shaking.

At last it was done and I went to stand up straight, a shot of panic as I felt a hand around me waist and hot, beery breath in me ear. Before I had time to do anything, that's if I had known what to do other than stamp on his foot, I was sitting in the lap of a bushy-bearded copper with lusty eyes and a mean mouth. "Now then what have I here? Another of those fresh-faced catholic girls, always a sure bet for a good time, eh boys? Have I felt this one before? Can't say as I remember."

A wave of indignation and revulsion passed through me as I struggled to get free. "I will thank you to leave me alone," coming out of me mouth instead of the "Get your filthy hands off me!" that was competing with it in me mind.

One of them from the other side of the table says, "Ah you want to watch that one William. If I am not mistaken, she's the sister of that Jimmy McBride, selector scum and common thieves if ever there was a family of them."

They were all laughing as I walked steadfastly away, thankful they couldn't see the colour of me cheeks. I managed to put the tray back on the bar when I felt a hand on me shoulder and turned to let fly the mixture of history and anger and embarrassment that was fuelling that colour when me mouth just fell open. This was no copper, and if me heart was pounding before, it just took up dancing a jig.

I had expected bearded and brutish, ugly and mean. What I saw, and I can still see his face exactly as it was to this day, left me spellbound. Dark curls framing a perfect angled face, long lashes shading dark eyes that just creased at the corners, a thin line of a beard just edging his jaw, and a mouth that…well I blush to say what occurred to me right there and then, and that was before you even dragged yer eyes downwards. I recall I was only as far as the waistcoat, "Jesus."  
Well I am not sure that I said it out loud but either way it immediately occurred to me that this man, who I could barely keep my eyes from, in front of me was about as far from any notion of Jesus that I could imagine, and the flush that went through me about the opposite of the sort of humble devotion I was supposed to feel anyway.

My tumbling thoughts were pulled up by his voice, and I swear I thought I would faint at it, well that and the grin that said he knew exactly what just went through my mind. "Anyone ever tell ye not to mix with them coppers? You'll not be wanting that sort of reputation."

I didn't hear at first what it were he actually said, I think I was watching his lips and feeling that soft voice seep into me ears, and then it struck me, and he may as well have crucified me there and then. He thought I were messing around with coppers. Before I had even time to stutter he had turned away, back to his friend at the bar, and they walked away with their beer, not even a glance back.

"Lass, lass, will ye stop catching flies and move?" Mr. O'Leary's voice finally penetrated me head, and I thought I heard him mutter the name Joseph Byrne and it being bad enough him distracting one of the barmaids already. Mortified and devastated both at the same time, and them both mixed up to a sickness in my stomach, I could only scamper around, head down, desperately trying to get everything in a sort of order—that comment, that name, and Christ, Lord forgive me for blaspheming so much, but those eyes.

If you could cram anymore into those few minutes then there must have been a gap that the universe decided needed filling, because with a tray full of empties, I watched him stand with a smile that would have melted the Virgin Mary and sneak up behind Maggie. I nearly shouted out, I can't imagine to this day what I would have shouted, "Look Out!" not really the thing and I was looking hard enough for the both of us anyhow. But words were more than beyond me as I saw him slip his hands around her waist, lean against her back and kiss her neck. You would have sworn it was my skin that those lips just grazed for the sway I felt. Maggie's face flushed in an instant while he smiled at her and kissed her some more.

I was wondering how she was still standing when a voice came beside me, "If I can tear you away from him for a just a moment, hate to see another of you lasses fall for him without a fight, I'm Aaron Sherritt. Pleased to meet ye."

Reluctantly I pulled me eyes to the face in front of me, round and soft, blonde curls and a twinkle in his eye that was asking me something, me just remembering what I was supposed to be doing in this place. "Begging your pardon, mister. Will you be wanting beer?" and I went to step towards the bar.

Catching me arm he winked and nodded, "Well I will have one if you are gonna fetch it for me," and I realised what the question was.

I felt like I needed someone to shake me out of this dream. My fingers fumbling with the glasses and a head on the beer that would have made a beard for him in heaven, grabbing hold of the bar I willed myself steady with a silent "Come on now." Aaron Sherritt was next to me when I opened me eyes. "You alright, lass? Bowled over by me charms, I wouldn't wonder. Now what will I call ye?"

"Her name is none of your concern, Aaron. Between you and Byrne there's hardly a lass left to be married with her honour round here."

"Ah sure now, Mr. O'Leary, that's just a rumour. And anyhow I was only being friendly, making her feel at home yer know."

"Aye, I know how welcome Michael McHaggerty's daughter felt too. Now will you be wanting that beer or no?"

If this night could get any worse, it just did. I could hear the conversation between Tom O'Leary and me Da in me head and so could Aaron. In the course of minutes I had gone from the happiest soul alive to a copper's strumpet to a girl needing protection. I had but a second to salvage anything, and I grabbed it. "It's fine, Mr. O'Leary. We were just talking. My name is Aoife, but they call me Evie."

A shake of the head from Mr. O'Leary and the sort of self-satisfied grin from Aaron that meant, I hoped, that he saw the drag of the line in the sand I had just drawn, a churn in my stomach in the seconds that it took to realise the step I had taken. In one sentence a mile from me Da and Mr. O'Leary and a mile into who knows where.

At the end of the evening me Da arrived as expected and sat down for a beer with Mr. O'Leary while me and Maggie cleared up the place. I could see them trading smiles and a few coins, but it wasn't them I was interested in. I had to speak to Maggie. In a whisper as we wiped the tables, I asked, "So who was that kissing you?"

A flush in her cheeks that only made her prettier and a whisper back, "Joe, that's Joe Byrne. We are courtin'." Round to another table, and then, "Between you and me, he has me heart. He's a handsome fella, wouldn't you say?"

I prayed me blush didn't give me away. "Aye, Maggie, he is that alright." I could have stayed there all night. I wanted more, and to leave the bar now was to wave goodbye to everything it felt, but me Da was there with a "Time to go Lass," and before I could catch me breath we were swaying over the tracks towards home.

Me heart still felt like it was being squeezed and wrung out, like I watched me Ma's strong wrists do on a Monday washday, when me Da spoke unexpectedly. "Tom's asked me to let you work more Lass, says you're a good 'un," a smile as he squeezed my knee, "and I am sorry to say we need the money."

A lurch of joy in me stomach then I looked into his face and it all went—me Da was asking me, 18 years old and in his eyes still the little girl he could bounce on his knee. I could see the rip in his heart that he had to ask, the years of struggle and still some hope in his eyes, and now here he was in need of those few coins I could bring in. "I'll do whatever you say Da, you know best."  
But there was a pang, I can still feel now, as I said it, a pang of "Judas," of my denial of him, remembering how only a few hours before I had thrown all me eggs in basket that had no bottom that I knew of. He smiled again, and I nearly blurted out, "I am sorry!" and threw myself on his knee, except that he would have no idea what I was on about.  
home next


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2 – Ego Te Absolve**

The next day being Saturday me Ma let me sleep in, but of course I did little of that, instead pulling the covers up round me legs and going over every detail, stuck on his face and the way that he walked and well, I spent some time thinking about how those lips might feel I can tell ye. And then it started—I could hear me Ma banging with the pots and then the shouting. I didn't need to hear the words, but I could, every one of them. "We'll not have this family run with money made in a bar! If my mother was alive…."

"I have made my decision and that's the end of it Cathleen! And what's more, she's to stop over with Maggie O' Shea to save me fetching her home in the dead of night."

I didn't breathe out, and there was a silence in the next room that made my heartbeat sound as loud as the thump of those water pumps on the river. Then they started again, and if the argument had been loud before, this was a hundred times that, only now I wasn't listening, me mouth open and me head swimming. When I could move, I scrambled to the cupboard and pulled open the drawers, looking for Christ knows what, a surprise new dress to mark the occasion that God had just seen fit to leave me. Well He already made one miracle, but this new one wasn't to be, and I slammed the drawers shut again, sitting back on the bed shaking me head and nevertheless smiling like an idjut.

I spent the day making meself scarce and busy, not giving me Ma chance to start the conversation I knew she was dying to and by 6 o'clock I had managed it. Me Da sitting on the cart and her face like thunder, but I kissed it all the same and tried to look like I had the burdens of Job on me back, a weary "See you tomorrow at church then," before I turned to go.

"Now then lass, I know you think this is an adventure like those stories I told you," he was looking at me as we bumped along. A grin, "Oh aye, it is an adventure, but I am trusting you me girl, we don't need any…well now…that is to say, we don't need any more trouble in this family."

And before I had sense to stop meself I smiled, all self satisfied and stupid, "Ah now Da, I wasn't born yesterday. I know what those boys are after, that Aaron Sheritt and…"

I wish I had kicked meself harder, should have just let him say his piece. Instead, me Da's eyes were flashing and he pulled up the cart, "You stay away from them! You hear me Evie!"

We passed the rest of the journey in silence, and then he was gone. I watched the back of him disappear, a weight in me head, something about not letting him down, but a deep breath and I pushed open the door of the bar with a grin so wide you'd have thought the Queen herself had invited me to stay. Maggie looked up at me, and if she meant to return the grin, it was far from that. A look up to see Tom O'Leary busy behind the bar, and she nodded towards the cellar door.

In the dark dampness she took my hand in hers, "Tom says you are to stay with me tonight."

"Well aye," I said, doubtful and trying to guess what she was going to say.

She took pity on me, "Ah, don't look so worried now, we'll have a grand time, but it's just that I have a problem, well not a problem as such. Ah Jesus, look, Joe is going to come by tonight, not to the bar." Pennies the size of boulders were dropping on me toes and my mouth was open for the second time that day. "Thing is he was gonna stay for a while, you know."I was blushing and I knew it, not only for embarrassment, but because even then I had an inkling of what that might mean, what he would be doing to her. And to tell the truth it made me stomach feel funny, not to mention someplace else, as I recall.

There was no time to sort it out as Tom was shouting from upstairs, and we both scuttled like beetles to hide our thoughts from showing. Flashes of it came to me mind as I carried crates and bottles up and down. Saturday night was, if anything, busier than Friday, and by the time Mr. O'Leary banged the doors shut I was fair exhausted. A tap on me shoulder and Maggie led the way out of the bar and up the wooden stairs. I had never seen anywhere so grand, well I had never actually walked up a set of stairs before, never mind seen patterned paper on walls in someone's house.

At the top she stopped and turned a key in the door in front of her, opening it up into a small room, not much more than a bed, a chest of drawers, and a closet to the side, but it looked like a palace to me all the same. Taking the candle she had carried from the bar, she lit the oil lamp that stood on a table next to the bed. A warm glow illuminated the colours of the blankets and the walls that I am sure must have seen better days, but there was never a better day for me than right now. In unison we slumped on the bed and reached down to untie each other's bootlaces, kicking them off against the wall before lying back against each other.

"What shall I do, Maggie?" She hesitated and then we stumbled all around the alternatives, none of which were any more workable than the rest—sleeping in the pub itself, another room, going home, even the corridor outside.

"Look, I'd not ask you, but on my life, Evie, I want him here, and well," she was looking anywhere and everywhere but at me, a rush of words from her mouth, "I love him touching me. We only did it the once before and all, and me Ma would kill me without a ring on me finger for sure, but…"

"Maggie, " I interrupted her flow, "I think I understand." We managed to let our eyes meet for just a second.

"Well I was wondering, since we can't think of anything else, what if you sat in the closet? We could put a blanket in there and everything."

A few seconds passed while we both thought that through, and then, well I don't know where it came from, but I couldn't stop it, just a glance at her and she was there too, both of us laughing out loud with the thought of it, mixed all up with ssshhh's and giggles and hands over mouths. Between it all, "What if he hears me, Maggie?" but we both knew what I meant. Neither of us had ever lived in a house where the walls were thick enough to stop you hearing, never mind a closet.

"Well now, you don't have to peep." A look between us, and it was settled. "He will be here soon," a crack in her voice that sent a shiver.

To distract ourselves we cleared a space in the closet. There was not much but a couple of old dresses and a pair of boots, but Maggie seemed determined to make it comfy. "How long do you think?" I was trying to make small talk, you know like you would at the bar, but this was not "And how is your old mother, Mr. McGinty?"

Her look was nothing like easy. "Ah well, no matter, this looks just grand anyhow. I will be asleep in minutes." We both knew it was a lie but nevertheless she smiled.

"Evie, thank you."

I shook me head and grinned. "You're me mate, what else is there to do? I expect you would do likewise." A giggle at the very thought of it, and then we heard it—a whistle outside, piercing the air and freezing us for just a second.

It stirred us into a flurry. Maggie's hands in her hair and a look that reflected mine, and for some reason I kissed her cheek. When I thought about it after, it seemed to be like me Ma did on that first day at school, only I guess she wasn't going to learn no reading. I squeezed into the closet and pulled the door to, a frown, I am sure, when I couldn't get it to shut, there being no handle in the inside. "Maggie," a whisper as I tried to slip me fingers and close the door at the same time, "Maggie!" But she was already at the window, pulling back the cloth that covered it and lifting the latch.

I could feel me heart pounding already.

"Ah there you are, lass. I've been waiting all night to see you" His voice was suddenly in the room and so loud I couldn't believe it. I squeezed me eyes closed tight. 

A creak of the bedsprings, "Ah Joe," Maggie's voice a little shaky, "will I fetch you a beer?"

"It's not beer I want lass."

I was hardly breathing, and I daren't move a single muscle for fear of the noise that it would make, but the next sounds almost made me gasp—a mew like a cat and the renewed creak of the springs, the rustle of cotton, and a little giggle that sounded nothing like Maggie.

My head was swimming, I think I really needed to breathe, and me eyes shot open to find something to focus on, remind me where I was. If I was hoping for Maggie's old shoes and the back of the closet door to do the trick, which in truth I don't know if I was or not, what was before me did precious little to throw me head a lifeline. Through the crack in the door I could see his head, his curls, his face, kissing her underneath him, while his fingers pulled at the bows of her underclothes, Maggie's arms were around his neck. But what I saw next took me breath away, her petticoats all undone, his hands were on her breasts, circling over them, his thumbs over her nipples. I watched his eyes taking her all in, a smile around his mouth, "Ah sure you are beautiful, Maggie."

I didn't know what to do in truth, a flash of "This shouldn't happen," but the look on her face was nothing like outrage. Then she moaned, and me eyes flicked to the part of the gap so I could see him better, and I couldn't help meself, "Oh Jesus." He had her breast to his mouth. I couldn't even blink. Of course it was not an unusual sight for itself, I had seen me Ma feeding our Sean and even Mary as a babe, but here HE was, oh those curls, with his mouth to her breast sucking, holding them like they were the most precious things he just found. I couldn't move a muscle, just "Oh Jesus" whispering out of me lips.

And then, God help me, his voice, which I will never forget, "Will you let me, Maggie?"

I was still recovering from the sound of his voice, that question, when I heard the bang of boots hitting the floor, the clink of a belt, and saw a little smile as I realised she had said "Yes."

I knew I shouldn't see it, I knew this was private, and if not between man and wife than was as good as, although I never imagined me ma looked quite like Maggie did right now, her head tilted back as he kissed her. I shut me eyes again and put me hands against me ears, and the only thing that came to me was the Hail Mary, so that's what I said inside me head over and over, for only God knows how long, pushing meself back against the wood of the closet and hoping that the rhythm of it would take me. I wondered for a while if you could get absolution and have sinful thoughts both at the same time, whether it would work like that, only there was no chance I would be asking Father O'Donahue that particular question in confession the next morning.

And the rhythm of it did take me, only the Virgin Mary couldn't compete, little groans and the sound of the bed against the wall providing a far deeper beat that connected. I could almost feel meself swaying with it, and I opened me eyes and leaned forward to see better. Well I don't suppose I have many blushes to spare by now, but nonetheless I can't describe it all. I thought I would rot in hell, but I couldn't help meself push the door just a little, wide-eyed as I watched him move deep between her legs, his naked skin perfect and smooth in the candle light, his shoulders flexing as he pushed against her, and god forgive me, I felt a flush inside me that had me fingers aching to touch.

I could hear him breathing hard and mixing with her moans and "Oh Joes," and to tell the truth I was glad when it came to the end, cos I was about ready to join my voice to theirs. He pushed against her white legs so hard I could almost feel it, and then they slowed down, shivering and collapsing, and I don't know about Maggie, but I felt like crying.

I stretched me legs out, suddenly aware of the stiffness, but then froze as the heel of Maggie's boot scraped the bottom of the closet. With me eyes screwed up tight I waited, not a single breath. I could hear him shift, "What was that?"

A pause before Maggie spoke, "Ah sure it'll be Tom down the hall."

Me eyes were screwed up so tight me head hurt, but I could hear him pick up his trousers from the sound of a belt. "Aye, maybe it was Aaron outside. He said he would come back." Softness then to his voice, "Ah will ye come here my beauty."

There was no way I was going to look at anything more, even if I could, a flood of relief through me and I just waited, the sounds of soft kisses, and then, "I will be on me way now. I'll come by the bar when you are working for sure. Tuesday is it? Aye of course it is." A sound of nothing and then I got me answer, "Ah sure now, don't cry Maggie, I have to go. Old man O'Leary would call the coppers if he found me here in the morning, you know that."

The wind blowing through the now-open window must have caught the door of the closet. I jumped out of me skin as it banged shut, glad though I was, I remember now, to be in the dull black inside there as they said their goodbyes. Moments later I blinked as Maggie opened the door, her cheeks still wet but with a rosy hue, and I struggled to stand, instinctively reaching to tie up the strings of her petticoat as I smiled at her.

"I need to sleep, Evie."

"Come on then." It was too big to talk on yet, so I pulled back the quilt and we climbed inside the warmed covers, shifting around to find the best comfort before she closed her eyes. I remember thinking it would be a while still before I could sleep, at the very least I had to figure out what to say to the face behind the confession screen.

I must have sorted it out enough to be able to sleep, because the next thing I knew there was a cold, dirty light shining, well come to think of it "shining" might not be the word, more kind of "leaking" through the material that hung at the window. As me senses woke up I could feel the movement of Maggie's body against mine, little jerks—she was crying. I sat up alarmed, "What in heaven's name is the matter, Maggie?" I couldn't stop me mind racing round all sorts of things. Was she hurt? Did it hurt the next day? It had looked so beautiful, still, well I just didn't know.

Her face was still turned away, "Don't take it badly, Evie, but I wish he was here when I woke up."

Worried as I was, I could see that there would be truth in that, and I slipped me legs out of the covers, which only made her cry all the more. So I did the only thing I could think of and laid down next to her, me arms just resting on hers. "I guess he will be though, Maggie, when you and him are married."

I thought the silence might hurt me ears, and I wondered if she had stopped breathing. Then when I was about to lean over and check, a small voice said, "He does love me you know, Evie, he told me."

If I had been confused before I was furrowing me brow now. "Well he must Maggie, he done that to you."

Now she did turn round and her eyes, I will never forget, full with tears and yet with a look I couldn't quite make out at first, until I realised that was because I was used to seeing it someplace else. Me Da. Me Da looked like that when another crop failed or another store of tatties were blighted, a mixture of fear and defiance. I couldn't stop looking at her while she spoke, "I don't think Joe Byrne is the marrying kind." A breath and then something that just made my mouth fall wide open, "I think he has other girls too."

It was all clanking round me brain—Tom O'Leary's remarks, what me Da had said, Aaron Sherritt, the way Joe Byrne looked at a person, and a corner of a thought that I had to kick right out of me mind as soon as it came in, he had other girls. Shaking me head and hoping the thoughts would fall in a better order, I got out of bed for sure this time. "And you still let him?" I have to confess I don't know why I said that, and as God is my witness, I didn't want to know the answer, because me brain was already too full. All I knew was that I had to get out of there before it flooded.

"Evie, where are you going?" Maggie was struggling to untangle herself from the covers, her eyes now adding pain to the mixture of it all, but I just couldn't stay.

"Home, Maggie, I got to go home. Will I see you on Friday? Aye, I will," and I was almost falling down the stairs and out the door. I can still feel me heart pounding now as I pushed open the door and took a huge gasp of air from the street outside. I made sure the latch was closed behind me like I wanted to keep all that in, and I sat down on the edge of the horse trough to wait for me Da, praying he wasn't going to ask me anything at all because I just couldn't speak.

I had a bit of a wait, long enough to breathe again and wonder if I shouldn't go back and comfort her, but then me mind would slip back into wondering, what was I gonna say? After all, I had nothing but questions, and I was as sure as can be she didn't want to hear those. So I just sat there, and eventually me Da came. I watched him pull the cart down the street towards me, whistling and happy to see me. The cart had barely stopped before I was up on the seat next to him.

"Will we being going straight to church then, me girl?" Not a question really as we both knew that if we didn't, there'd be no supper nor anything else for us back home. I was so grateful to hear his voice, and I nodded like fool. "Cat got your tongue, did she lass?" smiling at me as he urged the horse forward and his arm coming round me shoulders, and I could have cried.

"Ego te absolve." That is the only part I can remember about that morning. I am willing to bet, just to add to me sins, that I heard all about the trials of a saint facing mortal peril in which he or she stood for good against evil, but all of a sudden it didn't seem too straight forward. Ah sure I had heard me Da ranting about "that scoundrel Father Donaghue, and whose side was he on anyways?" Once when my brother Michael stole a few bits of ham from the kitchen of the big house where he worked, the priest had said he should be made to work there for nothing for a whole month, which didn't seem right at all since it was going to waste anyhow. Now come to think of it, I had in me mind too what Father Donaghue had said to me about roasting in the fires of hell when, good girl that I was, I had told him that Danny McCabe had kissed me and tried to touch me, like it was my fault and all.

Anyway, by the time it was my turn to go into the confession, to slip our family's wooden rosary beads through me fingers, I was shaking, worried more about what on earth I would say, rather than the punishment I no doubt deserved. But as muddled as me mind was, I knew that to tell on Maggie was not the thing to do. So I muttered about cursing and angry thoughts against those coppers and that I had wanted a new dress. I took me "Ego te absolvo" with me head bowed so as he wouldn't see me eyes, and for the second time already that morning, walked away on shaky legs as fast as I could go.

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	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3** **- Caught With A Sheep **

It being spring we worked liked billy-o that next week, scraping and pulling at that earth, kidding ourselves that THIS year it was gonna make us something to spare. I worked as good as the boys, well I put me back into it anyhow, the grit under me fingernails and the ache in me muscles stood testament to that. And I seem to recall that despite the futility of it, I enjoyed meself, messing about with Sean, joking with me Da, and falling into bed right after supper without even taking me dress off. Funny enough, it made me feel better too, solid, like I knew what I was doing and the rest of it was in God's hands, not that He'd showed us any great favours up to now. I did all I could to keep Maggie and Joe out of me mind, but all the same, I could have cried to think of her so upset. And him, well he just invaded me dreams whether I asked him to or not.

On the Wednesday I think it was, me Da says we need the hoes and knives sharpened and do we all want to come to town with him as he had heard the tinkers were there. In truth I think he wanted a drink since I was a dab hand with the sharpening stone, but of course we jumped at the chance. Me Ma put on what passed for her best dress and bonnet, she flattened down Sean's hair with a dab of spit on her hand, and we set off.

Beechworth always seemed like a huge place, dusty streets lined with wood-fronted houses, most of them with a porch so as when it rained you could walk along the planks and not sink into the bog that the street became. But that day was bright and fresh, a proper dose of sunshine in the air, and it was like the whole town turned out. We had to wait an age for the tinker to get to our bundle, wrapped in an old shawl the knives were, all bent and blunt. Me Da gave the tinker a copper coin out of his pocket though, feeling generous and full of hope me Da was, spring being like that.

Me Ma took Sean and Mary off to the haberdasher's for some cotton thread. We were in need of some new clothes for sure, but it seemed she had it set in her mind that with a few more "stitches in time" the clothes we had would last us awhile longer yet. Me mind was just wandering as I sat next to Da on the steps across the way when I heard me Ma's voice across the street, "Maggie O'Shea! And how are you? Well, I hope. And you've been looking after my Evie."

I swear me stomach turned a somersault right there and then. I looked to see, and if I didn't flush bright red right then, it was a miracle. He was standing there with Maggie. "Evie! Evie, look who's here now!" Me Ma was speaking from across the road, I could see her mouth moving, but I couldn't quite hear her for the sound of me blood pumping at the sight of him again.

She was beckoning for me to come say hello, and I knew I had to do it. I was wincing every step—for the way I had left Maggie, for the fact I had watched them, and even more because I thought he would see it in me face. I once read about people walking the plank, a kiddie's book when I was trying me best to put letters and sounds in order, and that's what it felt like, walking straight across the street only to plunge deep down.

And I nearly did. Joe…Christ, the sun was on his face and setting it in a glow, setting off the darkness of his eyes, his hair, and his lashes. His hands were deep in his pockets, and for the life of me, I couldn't stop images of the look of his skin and his arms and his mouth at her breast, and the sound of him on top of her from flashing into my mind.

"Hello there, Maggie," me Da's voice bringing me back somehow, "and Joseph. Well now, if that's not a turn up. Will you give me best wishes to yer mother?" Well me head spun round quick as a flash, how did me Da know his name?

"Aye, that I will when I next see her." Joe's voice was so soft I could feel it, that and some bristle of skin and hair between me Da and him. But Joe was looking at me—weighing me with some other scales, only I didn't know what the measure was. All I did know was that his gaze was making me feel hotter than I should have been.

Me Ma, who never could stand a silence however full it was already, was intent on jamming it with all sorts of words that I can't now recall, but all I wanted was for Maggie to hear me out, to forgive me for leaving her crying and all, and for him to stop looking like that, stop being so beautiful in the sun, so that I could get on with the job of thinking about what a terrible thing he was doing to Maggie to make her so sad.

At last me Ma stopped, but her swansong just about knocked me off my feet. "Well I expect you will be having our Evie to stay again next Saturday, will you?"

I watched it like it was a dream I needed to pinch myself awake from but couldn't move me fingers. I watched the frown pull his eyebrows together and saw the questioning look he threw at Maggie before he spoke, "Well now, Mrs. McBride, are you sure you're not mistaken?"

Me Ma looked directly at him. "I can assure ye, Joseph Byrne, that I know exactly where my daughter spends her nights. The same cannot be said of your poor mother, I hear."

"Ah now, Cathleen, there's no need…the lad's grown," me Da trying to stop her flow.

But Joe, well he must have picked it up from the pleading in mine and Maggie's eyes of "Jesus, don't say anymore," and anyways cautious of stepping into a bog he was just beginning to see the edge of, he just nodded his head down for a second, "I am sure you do, Mrs. McBride. Sure it was me who got the day wrong."

"That will be all that stuff you and those yeller men…"

But me Da had had enough. "Cathleen! Evie, you and Mary take yer mother and Sean home will you? I have some business with Tom."

Me Da was already eyeing up the door to the bar where Michael and Jimmy were standing waiting for the turn of the key when me Ma opened her mouth, but I cut her off, "Aye, of course." She wasn't about to row in front of Brenda O'Shea's daughter, and you could almost see the wheels turning in her mind about the things that might be whispered should she accuse me Da in public of been a drunk. "Good bye, Maggie." I sent her the friendliest smile I could muster, but just a flash of me eyes at Joe.

It was too late into the night to think, but there I was awake and staring up at the ceiling, puzzling through me head that maybe Maggie thought it worth the tears to be with Joe that way, when I heard me Da and the boys winding across the rise that leads to our shack. By the sounds of it, Michael was worse for wear, and the other two intent on waking the dead. I could hear loud sshhes as they neared the door and I snuck out of me bed to light them a lamp or two. The walls were wood and hessian, and I had no desire for us all to go up in flames. "Ah Evie, that's me girl!"

Da always got like that, and in truth, I didn't mind at all, at least he was happy, it was better than those dark, depressed moods of his. He fell back into the chair, his boots covered in mud now all over the floor. "Jimmy will you help?" I called, but it was pointless, me brothers about fit for nothing, half asleep already, and off to bed.

"Oh, will you leave it, Evie, and see if there's any ale left in the pantry, will ye girl?"

To my surprise there was one bottle left, his 'in case of trouble' supply I don't doubt, and I handed it to him and brought a smile to his face. I knew this was it, the time to ask, when I could do no wrong, well at least I hoped as much. We exchanged a few words about how it had been in the town, and then I just blurted it out, "What do you know of Joe Byrne, then Da?" I thought I had blown it, his eyes looking intent and no sound from his mouth, "Only you know, Maggie and him are courtin' it seems."

He looked for all the world like I had just told him he had inherited the bar at Beechworth. "Well I am not sure that I know anything much, lass." I thought that might be it, but me Da hadn't finished, like it had taken a few seconds for his mind to cast back and settle down someplace other than now. "I remember now, he was a bright lad. Patrick said he was the sharpest in the class, 'specially at reading, though that's when he wasn't out nicking with that friend of his, Aaron."

I couldn't help but smile to meself. So he wasn't just handsome then. I think I had kind of guessed that anyways, well that and I had a picture in my mind of a boy with curls and dirty knees. But me Da sat forward all of a sudden, "Wait a minute now," his brow furrowed, "I heard he just done 6 months in Beechworth Gaol, him and Sherrit for stealing a cow. Rough place that mind, Lass." His thoughts searching back further, "That's right, bastard coppers done them for 'illegal possession of meat.'"

The look on me Da's face I couldn't right work out, so I just nodded and hoped he would go on. "Anyway, I knew his father, Evie, back in the ol' country. Did I never tell ye?" and then I knew I was in for a night's worth of all the tired eyes you could imagine.

"No, you never did." I pulled me legs up under me and the blanket tighter round me shoulders and looked back at him straight. "Well I know there was that thing with the sheep stealing an all but not much more."

Me Da kind of grimaced. "Ah well, you see Evie, that wasn't the whole story." His voice lowered a bit, "But you know what your mother is like, she'd rather have an adjectival sheep thief for a husband than…well…" I could see his mind wandering off over flashes of arguments and bitterness and disappointment.

Me eyes must have been as big as saucers, all kinds of things running through me mind, "Than what, Da?"

"Well, the thing is lass, I did steal a sheep or two, there's hardly a soul that didn't, hardly a table that wasn't laid with ill-gotten gains from someplace. Some of us got caught and some didn't, but the reason them coppers was after me was because of other reasons," a conspiratorial glance around the room like there was someone hiding behind the door, "it were more a question of politics."

Quite frankly, if he had said it were on account of Queen Victoria's direct say so, it would have made more sense to me. "What do you mean, Da?"

He took a swig of beer and looked at me straight. "You're a good girl, Evie, know when to keep quiet. Yer mother would have me guts for garters, but I will tell ye anyways."

"I met Patrick Byrne years before I was so graciously sent for this little trip by Her Majesty, the Queen of England." The words almost spat out of his mouth, and I was just mesmerised, like as I was on the brink of something to see me Da so suddenly agitated. "Patrick's father himself was deported out here long before. He'd been a rebel of sorts too, and the powers that be thought it better to let him go do his agitating on the other side of the world, more convenient wouldn't you say? Anyways the rest of the family struggled on, Patrick said, though the landlords got greedier and greedier. These squatters that we have to put up with now, well they learned well the lessons from the old country about how to tie a man down to the land and then rub his face in the dirt."

I could see me Da tense in the chair, he couldn't look at me, and all I could think to do was just wait, another swig and he started again. "Soon as he was of an age, Patrick left County Carlow and came to Dublin. Well the countryside was no place to stay if you had two legs and half a brain, thousands dead from the famine and nothing save pious 'you get your reward in heaven' from the pulpit, bloody hypocrites they were. That's where I met him, in Dublin, 1848 I think it were. He got a job on the docks and we just fell in with each other, in the beginning just drinking mates, and then, well the unions started organising in the docks, fellas campaigning for a vote were always round, and the Irish rebels were making a noise too, and we got drawn into it all."

Me Da smiled, "Aye that we did, Lass. That's when I determined meself to try and read, we had that many leaflets and papers and all, I wanted to find out what it all meant. All I did know was that we weren't paid enough to feed ourselves, and that the bastards that owned the ships were swanking round town in smart clothes and with fat bellies whilst we worked like dogs in the holds of ships that were like adjectival tombs."

"The next year though Patrick tells me that his Da has sent for him, wants his sons in Australia. I watched him sail off, I did, thought I'd never see him again neither. Anyways over the next few years we gave the bastards a bit of a run for their money sometimes and other times they would knock us for six. We heard stories of uprisings and trouble from all over, those lot in France at it again, and across the water in Manchester, that's in England lass, they were fighting with coppers on the streets. By the time 1855 came, I was well known, people used to come to me room to find out when the next meeting would be and such, and that's when I got caught with the sheep."

Just a moment it took and then me Da laughed out loud and I did too at thoughts of sheep running round a tiny room. "Course it wasn't alive, just meat that was being shipped out that I had helped meself to, well I had nothing…"

He looked at me like he needed an excuse, and I almost burst into tears, "Da…"

But then his face turned, "I can hear the bastard now, 'We got yer Seamus McBride,' and see the smiles on their faces. If there'd not been four of them, I swear I would have killed him there and then."

"Anyways, I was well and truly done for, deported out here in 1855, the 4th of August it were on The Havering bound for new South Wales under Captain John Fenwick," he spat into the grate as he said it. "We docked that November, and I found me way here to Beechworth by asking around." His eyes smiling again, "I couldn't believe I had found Patrick again in this god forsaken hole, but I did, and with a wife too, Margaret. She was a pretty lass, and if I remember right, soon after I arrived she was expecting her first born, your Joseph."

Me Da sat back in his chair, whisked away in his thoughts to a dark time much later. "Was a terrible day for sure when Patrick died, leaving his Margaret with all those young uns. Joseph can only have been about 10 years of age. Of course, me and yer ma tried to help as best we could, but Margaret's had it hard, and I don't suppose her eldest gallivanting off with those Chinese fellas nor getting himself caught by the coppers has made it easier on her." Me Da stopped for a bit and took a breath. "And yer mother means well, Evie, but Tom says the lad is a bit of a scallywag. I reckon Maggie would be better off with our Michael."

Luckily it was dark by now so he didn't see me blush, but me Da's thoughts had moved on.

"See if there's anymore of them beers out there, will ye Evie? All that talking has fair dried me out."

Well I scampered out to look in the store as fast as I could, not even the beginnings of questions ripe in me mind, I was just reeling from it all. It took me a while, searching in the dark with me thoughts not quite on it, and by the time I got back me Da was snoring in the chair. I swept up the mud around his feet, whatever else I knew he didn't need a row from me Ma in the morning over mud, and I ran to get me blanket to cover him with.

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	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4 - Copperhead **

The next two days I worked just as hard, except now I had a big smile on me face whenever I thought of what me Da had said. "Common thieves and selector scum" that copper had called us, but now I knew the truth. And if I wasn't thinking about that, I had other details in me head now too, details about Joe Byrne that I rolled round and round. Makes me smile to think now, "a barmaid and a union man's daughter," what a grand title I thought that was, and how it made me feel, if not his equal, then at least not to be taken for granted.

At last Friday night came and I fair skipped into the bar. All I wanted was to be able to talk to Maggie and make things right, and I wanted to have done that yesterday. Me Da had a chat with Mr. O'Leary while we set up, and between them they cooked up Christmas and me birthday all rolled into one. "No point in the lass going all that way home, Seamus, and it's company for Maggie. Shall we say Evie stays here on the nights she works?" Me Da was more than pleased with the arrangement and settled down for a few to celebrate, laughing with his mates, the old fellas in the corner, as the place started to fill up, faces I was beginning to recognise now and some that would give me an extra tip for a smile. I caught Maggie when I could and we both knew…we would be just fine, the thought of sharing her room and having a chance to talk bringing smiles to our faces.

The arrival of Michael didn't even knock me off me perch, though he was with a big group of lads from the stables at the big house and also seemed to think that having a barmaid for a sister was a badge to be bragged about. Several times Mr. O'Leary had occasion to tell them to keep it down, intent on raising the roof they were, and drinking like there was no tomorrow. It was on one of me trips back and again to their table that Michael's mate Aidan grabs me hand, "What about a free drink then, Evie? Sure you can sneak one over to me, just to be friendly like."

"And why would I be wanting to be friendly, Aidan?" Sure he was nice enough looking and broader somehow like a man, but still just one of Michael's friends. I had never given him much mind.

"Because you like me, Michael told me so, said you might like some company and all, so well I was thinking…"

Well I was flushed red, but as much with anger as anything else. A flash of me eyes at Michael, "You can think all you like, Aidan Connelly, but the only thing free you'll be getting is a slap around yer face!" Me parting shot though was lost in the ale and the arrogance of them boys.

"Having trouble there, Evie?" Jesus save me, but Joe was in front of me, a gentle smile and curls all every which way from his ride to get here but nevertheless smart and all buttons and soft cloth. He was different entirely from those boys, something in the air around him overpowered you, like whatever you were doing was nothing as important as breathing him in.

He bent down to catch me eyes, a grin at the way I could only shake me head, "Aye, well I thought not." Leaning closer to me, and I swear I could feel the heat of his whisper on me ear, his mouth just inches from me skin, "Is Maggie in tonight? Only I might drop by later, will you tell her?"

I had to grab the chair beside me to keep from swaying as I took a deep breath. "Speak to him for Christ's sake" shouting in me head. "You can tell her yerself…she is down the cellar, I think Joe," and oh, didn't that feel good to say his name, still feels good now as it happens.

"Ah, so you will speak to me then!" a grin that about had me on me knees, and then he looked around to see where Tom O'Leary was. "Thanks lass," and with a touch on me arm he was gone down the steps.

I was still staring after him when me Da comes up to say goodbye, a furrow in his brow as he shook his head, "You'll have to walk home tomorrow, Evie. I got some work to be doing." Well it would be a long walk, but what did I care?

The next time I saw Maggie she was still tucking the hair back into the bun at the nape of her neck, a smile on her face, and it was all I could do to stop from hugging her to see her happy, well I guess he made her that too. Another busy Friday but at long last the men all went home, or as near to as they could get. Tom slid the bolt across the big wooden door, hasty goodnights were said, and we were up in her room, about ready to drop but with no intentions of sleeping.

Apologies she didn't want at all, what Maggie wanted was to tell me why, why she needed Joe so much. With our backs against the wall and our legs under the covers, she talked and I listened, asking her to repeat and explain and giving her those "oh please tell me more" smiles. She told me how Joe had come into the bar one day after he got let out of jail for stealing the cow like me Da had said. And how his eyes had looked right at her like he picked her out, and funny enough I knew exactly what she meant.

She was laughing, "Let me tell you, well that night there's this band playing downstairs and he asks me to dance. I couldn't move me feet because I might just fall over, do you know what I mean Evie? The man makes you feel funny all over before he even comes close."

I wasn't so sure I should agree, but I nodded anyhow.

"And well he just laughed at me and smoothed me hair and told me I was his, and I am Evie, though for the life of me I don't know what's gonna become of it all. Anyways, after that, he came by the bar more and more, sneaking downstairs to the cellar when I went to get beer, kissing me and making me forget what I was doing there, making me want more and more every time."

"I bet you are thinking I am loose, aren't ye, to let him do those things?"

The sudden sharpness of her words and her voice fair killing the smile on me lips. Me head spun round to look at her, "Jesus, Maggie, of course I don't. Well I don't know that it is right and all, but you are me friend."

While I was still looking at her she took me hand and let it all tumble out and me ears strained to hear every single word. "I had never been with a man before, Evie. Well you know, some boys that pulled at ye, but none of them that knew anything about it apart from the fact that their cock was aching and they thought that maybe it was time to put it somewhere other than in their own hands."

Well she must have heard me swallow hard because she stopped a while. "Forgive me, I need to tell someone. Will ye hear me out?"

I just squeezed her hand tighter and she nodded. "Right then, so anyhow, I never let any of them do it, you know, not until him. I remember it so well. Joe says he wants to show me some places up where he lives, the pools an all where he messed around as a boy, and it's important, and will I come with him. Well of course I says yes, and he comes by here on a big horse on a Saturday afternoon, looking all smart like for a proper day out and all. Only it didn't feel very proper. Leastways not how me Ma would see it, sitting up on that horse behind him and he rode so fast I had to put me arms round him to keep from falling off!"

I had to let out the giggle I had in me and she smiled. "Aye, I thought that too…wasn't like there was a fire or anything…Anyways, so we gets there, he even had a bit of bread and some meat from someplace and he sits on the grass by these big boulders talking, and well, if I said I ate anything I would be lying because me mouth was dry and my stomach churned all up with the sight of him. Joe though, he didn't seem so bothered, lying there in the sun with his eyes closed."

"Ah, but I reckon he was testing me, or maybe letting me test meself, letting me look at his body and his legs all there, shifting so I could see the shape of him and get to thinking about what I was doing out there in the middle of nowhere with him, before he reached out for me hand."

"But I tell you Evie, he was a million miles from them boys who would have it done in a minute if you were lucky. He was gentle and slow, using his tongue like he wanted to taste everything, as if nothing would be better than spending forever doing it. I can't exactly tell you how it feels when he kisses you, but it is like everything falls open to him, that there's nothing you wouldn't let him do, and there wasn't. By the time he had pulled me dress open and exposed me breast to the air and his lips, I swear I was beside meself with wanting for him to do more. Me legs were open before he even made a move…"

I could feel her shudder, even there in her hand, and then she asked a question that made me sit stock still. "Have you ever touched yourself, Evie?" she just glanced quickly at me.

There were a few moments that felt like a thousand while that one question hung in the air, I can tell ye. Moments when I weighed up giving her what she wanted, some understanding as against the real ignorance that was all I had to offer. I settled for the truth, a deep breath, "I have started to sometimes, but then thoughts of Father O'Donaghue always get the better of me…"

There was just another moment before we both just howled with laughter, me perfectly pink and shy of looking at her, but seeing the funny side all the same.I am not sure, but I think she sighed then. I thought she wished she had someone else to tell, but I was just desperate for her not to stop. "Go on Maggie, will ye?"

And she smiled, "Aye, I will," and in truth I think she needed to because it brought him closer to her.

"Well anyhow, he knew I'd not been with anyone, I reckon a man like him could probably tell from across the creek in the dark," a wry smile from Maggie that made me eyes widen a little and me legs close together without even thinking about it. "But he asked me all the same, and whether I wanted to, all gentlemanly like he was asking if I wanted this or that for supper, but all the while his eyes searching me and his hands, Jesus, anywhere he touched was shaking and I couldn't answer him in words, so I just closed me eyes and nodded."

She just went quiet and I feared that she was crying, but when I lifted me head from her shoulder a wistful smile was there instead. "It didn't hurt a bit, Evie. I thought it would, but he just moved slow at first, and well, I wanted him so bad I suppose it was just easy…but I never thought it would all fit in." Well, there was no way we couldn't laugh at that as soon as she looked me in the eye, both of us blushing and a little warmer somehow, laughing because well, what else was there to do?

"Maggie, can I ask you something?" She nodded. "Well…did you like it?" I don't know how I asked really but I had to know. This was different, what I had seen last Saturday night from that closet, had been different from any notion I had in me head. Granted I had only seen the animals on the farm and heard the grunts from behind me parents' wall, well and once years ago, Jimmy had shown me a dirty picture just to tease me.

A deep breath before she cleared her throat. "Christ, I never knew there was anything like it, never knew your body could do that to you. And when he tipped me hips somehow with his hands so…well, so I was all up against him and…it was like fainting Evie, fainting with the sheer pleasure of it."

Well, I didn't know what to say in truth, so I didn't, and Maggie, she didn't stop. "Anyways, afterward he is cuddling me and kissing me face, he knew I couldn't speak I reckon, so he did it all for me in that soft way he does, when there is a gush of wet between me legs, and me being the fool doesn't know what it is 'til I sit up and see blood all mixed up with that stuff that the fellas have, and he must have seen the shock in me eyes. 'Ah now, it's alright, Maggie. Let me help you,' he said all gentle, I can hear him now, 'That always happens the first time, did your mother not tell ye?'"

"And of course she hadn't because she didn't want to think on it until she had to on me wedding night," a sigh from Maggie that said it all, "and I was crying while he fetched a bit of water and a rag and handed it to me. Well anyhow, I washed and dried me dress as much as I could and all the while him watching me and holding out his hand and saying come sit down with me, and oh Evie, as frightened and scared as I was of it all, I never regretted that afternoon one bit. I can't explain it, I just can't, but it felt right to be out there in the middle of the bush in just me underclothes and letting him do that because, whatever the priest says, it was right because I wanted him and he wanted me too."

I don't know if she could tell by me face but I felt like I had heard all her sins, and the trouble was, I wasn't the least bit able to give absolution. "Ah, come on now Evie, give me a few Hail Mary's and I'll be done," she teased, but we both knew, so I did the only thing I could and hugged her tight.

I must have fallen asleep thinking about it, because next thing I know it is morning, and I am still dressed, Maggie too, but that was alright anyhow. Still early mind, and I laid there a few minutes more, questions in me mind that wouldn't go away, well there were thousands all piled up there, but mostly I just felt happy that she was my friend and that she trusted me.  
I climbed out of bed while she woke, chatting about the bar and saying see you later and all, before I headed off out to the street for me long walk back home.

On account of all the spring rain the street was full of potholes and puddles, some so deep you could lose yer leg in the mud, so I kept to the porches, glancing in at the windows as I passed by, stopping sometimes to marvel at the things a body could buy if she had the money and the inclination, though quite what you would want with it all, I couldn't make out.

I was just stepping down on to the track that headed out of town and eventually to our shack when I hears a shout behind me, "Hold up, Evie lass! Where would you be going in such a rush?" A familiar voice it was and I turned to see Aaron Sherritt step out of the doorway to that place that sold tobacco, Joe behind him, engrossed in lighting the cigarette in his mouth but a big smile when he saw me.

This was getting to be a habit of his, taking me words away when I least expected it, but I was as determined as I could be when faced with this man who I had only hours ago heard could make your body faint with pleasure, so I spoke with the bravest voice I could, "Good morning, Aaron...Joe. Well if you must know, I am on me way home."

Aaron was looking at me hard. "Well now, if you can wait an hour, I'd be pleased to escort ye, make sure you get home safe like."

Joe was smiling as he shook his head, "Jesus, she'd be safer with a copperhead."

I only just caught that, but anyway I knew better. "No, well thank ye anyhow, but I got to get back. We still got some planting to do and all."

Joe just grins at Aaron. "Anyway, I am going that way, got to call on Ned, being as he's just out of jail. His mother's got a selection a way on from Greta, a couple of miles past yours, Evie."

Since I had no idea who he was talking about and it just occurred to me Joe Byrne was offering to walk me home, I just held me breath and said nothing, but there was a conversation all in looks and hands going on between them two that I was just on the edge of understanding.

Aaron's parting words as I started walking being "You keep your word, now…remember the deal," and I could feel me hackles rise. A quick glance sideways that I wish I hadn't taken and "What is he talking about, Joe?"

You could almost hear the conversation in his mind, a lie or the truth? What will get me out of this one the easiest? He cleared his throat and then right out with it, "Aaron reckons he should have you since me and Maggie are…well..."

And if I hadn't already be angry I wouldn't have said it, but I was, "You and Maggie are what?" 

Now I think on it, maybe I was asking for meself, though I didn't want to admit it at the time. I wanted to know what it all was, and God help me, what it might mean to be one of his "other women."

"Me and Maggie are courtin'." He was looking at me with interest now, a crease at the edge of his eyes, "Ah, but you know that already, don't yer? You know exactly what me and Maggie are doing."

And of course he just wiped me clean off me feet. I didn't know where to look and settled on me shoes, willing them to keep moving forward.

It was several minutes before either of us spoke, but then he touched me shoulder, "Ah, will you come on now, Evie? We've a long walk, be a crime to do it in silence, wouldn't you say?"

And from somewhere I got the courage or the well…what to call it now? Maybe the deviliry, but whatever it was, I turned and smiled at him. What I got in return made the whole of me flush, a wink and an arm held out for me to slip mine through, "Well, that's just grand then." The cloth of his jacket was rough against me skin but in truth everything else was tingling too much to notice.

From then on he talked—about his family and their selection, about his friend Ned Kelly and how he had been unlawfully imprisoned—and me just listening to the sound of his voice and feeling the brush of his body against me arm, and it was all to soon that we were across the ford of Owen's River and in sight of where I lived. On the brow of the hill we stood looking down, " I best be going now."

And I didn't want him too. Lord help me, I wanted him to let me hold onto him, but he drew away. Bending to catch me eyes, "Thanks for the company, lass."

I watched him walk away, his long legs and easy walk that was like he just expected the earth to carry him wherever he wanted to go, and then he looked back, "We never shook on it, Evie, me and Aaron."

home next


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5 –Scorched Earth**

"And who was that I saw you with up on the hill?" I can hear her even now, me Ma that is, looking up from the pot hanging over the fire. She always had the ability to know where you'd been, and what you'd been up to, only this one time she just didn't know who with. Trouble was he seemed to have the ability to banish all the thoughts running through me head and instead leave me smiling. I was standing in the doorway, grinning like an idjut, thinking about the feel of him against me arm. Christ, he'd had his hands so deep in his pockets that me arm was resting on his hip, every bump in the road making contact, and right now I couldn't remember hardly a word he had said and I was trying really hard. "Evie, will you answer me girl?"

"Joe…that was Joe Byrne," and you would have thought I had said I was walking with the devil himself for the row she gave me. She carried on and on about "fellas like that" and what they wanted, and how could Brenda O'Shea let her daughter have anything to do with him, and how he was always off thieving horses and cattle, and how he had let good schooling go to waste, oh the list was endless, but mostly she went on about how he'd spoil me and I'd never get married proper after. Me "Oh Ma, don't be acting daft," only enraged her more, she even stopped stirring the stew to stand right in front of me. "You think I am daft, girl? Well I tell ye maybe I am, but I am not blind, that's for sure nor deaf neither, and I know all about that Joseph Byrne, and don't you be forgetting I know you, Aoife McBride. Cut from the same cloth as yer father, more's the pity. Look for trouble and there you'll find Seamus and Evie with Jimmy not far behind, I don't doubt."

Well, there was nothing I could say that would stop her, full pelt into me "crimes" which now I think on it were nothing more than refusing to be anyone other than meself, but then maybe for me Ma that was enough. After rivalling Father O'Donoghue on a Sunday—the church shoulda done itself a favour and let me Ma preach, she had enough hells bells and buckets of blood to fill many a congregation with fear—anyways, after all that she let me skulk off. I went to the fields and buried me head in that planting, but I was just waiting to get out of there, back to the bar, and if I am telling the truth, back to him.

Me and Maggie worked hard that night. The place was bursting with fellas and more than the usual number of coppers, you could feel the bristle in their beards though I hadn't a clue why at the time. More and more people arrived until finally I asked Mr. O' Leary what the occasion was. His face was a mixture of, well now, how to put it? He could see the till filling up and at the same time I couldn't help wondering if he thought that maybe this was gonna be the last night he would make any money. "It's Ned Kelly, lass. He just got out of jail, and the story is he is bent on celebrating in here tonight, and there being a whole bunch of folks who want to buy him a drink and a whole bunch who want to put him back there."

The drums and the fiddles were building up tunes and letting them down again, competing with voices from all corners and from every table, and if it hadn't been for those coppers sitting glaring in the corner, I am not sure you'd have found a better place. Hours seemed to pass in more and more rounds and tottering stacks of glasses and still there was no sign of him, and whilst everyone else was looking to the door for this Ned Kelly, my guilty glances were looking for dark curls and that smile of Joe Byrne's.

I was down in the cellar fetching yet another crate—in truth I was taking a rest from work in the cool of the air, there were that many people in the bar it was hard to breath, well it was either that or the thought of him walking through that door at any moment—when I heard voices outside.

"That Kelly needs taking down a peg or two and no mistake." I recognised the voice from someplace, full of whiskey and bitterness it was. A muffled response followed, and I squinted as if that would make me hear better somehow. I moved as quietly as I could to the doorway that led back up to the street when a sudden loud laugh almost made me leap out of me skin, and there was that voice again.

"Oh, I'll get warrants alright, mind those thick fenians cannae read anyhow, so we'll have no worries there."

I could feel the hairs on the back of me neck rise, not sure whether to shout out "Oh yes we can, yer bastards," but well, for once good sense got the better of me and I shut me mouth. They stopped laughing, and I couldn't figure out what was happening, straining to hear, and then it was obvious.

"Here he comes now, acting like he owns the place. I tell ye he has only been out a couple of days and already the Kelly's yard has more nags than it had a month ago. And I hear from Greta there are horses disappearing across the Murray into New South Wales. Him and his mates, that Tom Lloyd, Byrne, and Sherritt are behind it, I tell yer."

A grunt from the other man, "Evidence is it we need, Alexander?" A gap in the conversation before I heard him again. "New to Victoria aren't you, sonny? Well, they'll not get away with it, I swear. Get one of those Chinese fellas, I will. One of them will confess to seeing Kelly rebranding them horses."

I gave another start as a shout from upstairs broke the silence. "Will ye get up here, Evie? We are nearly drunk dry," and I prayed the coppers hadn't heard it too. By the time I got back up the steps I was met with a red-faced Mr. O'Leary and a redder-faced Maggie, though since she had Joe Byrne's arm round her waist, I suspect it was for a different reason altogether. "About time too," Tom flashed at me and waved a shoo to Maggie to get the drinks handed out to those thirsty hands waiting at the bar.

I just stared, only conscious of the door opening and I could finally put the face and the voice together—Constable Fitzpatrick, of course, with a younger copper whose name I didn't know. I swear he fixed his eyes on me as he walked to the back of the bar, but then again it might just have been because, in the middle of all the movement, I was standing stock still. I couldn't just go up to Joe and tell him what I had heard, those coppers' eyes wouldn't have missed a fourth leaf on a clover at 100 yards, but as I was thinking on it there was a shout from the dance floor.

"This one's a request for Ned Kelly!" The band struck up and I watched a tall, loose-limbed man with the sort of strong body you got from hard work and not quite enough to eat spin a woman round the floor. Defiance in his eyes that reminded me of me Da that night he told me about the unions and the struggle back home and a smile that said he knew who he was in the world. I confess that I had a pang of sadness that you couldn't quite say the same about me Da.

The dancing just got wilder, but by dodging the arms and legs and letting meself get spun around too I managed to behave like nothing had happened, like I didn't have a thousand things raging in me head. I was loading another tray when Ned Kelly comes to the bar, a nod to me and then he holds out his hand to Tom O'Leary. I took me time swapping the glasses, seemed like this fella had some importance round here and at the very least he was Joe's friend. "Well will you look at that, a full bar and the pumps still flowing. Quite a crowd you have in tonight, Tom."

"Aye well, I want no trouble, Ned," Tom leaning closer and I stopped breathing so as I could hear. "Between you and me I don't like them drinking here either, but a bar is a bar, and you know they'd close me down if I refused them."

"Well you'll have no trouble from me," Ned was so intent, and I have no doubt he knew I was listening, a crooked smile I just caught when I looked up to check if he knew I was there, "just here to enjoy myself. I met an old friend of yours as it happens, in the cells, he said to give you his regards." 

Tom looked more than a little bit alarmed, "A round on the house, it is then. Come now Evie, a drink for Ned here." He gave me the sort of wink that held no threat nor suggestion as I handed him a pint, and he was off before I had a chance to say a single word.

At last I managed to at least get to speak to Maggie, hissing as we bent over a table to get the empties. "I have to speak to Joe, Maggie. I heard them coppers talking about him and Aaron and that other fella, something about a warrant."

Maggie stopped moving for a second. "Christ, Evie, I don't want him back in jail! Listen, will I tell him to meet you in the cellar? We are fair out of beer again anyhow." Well I don't think I need to tell you how that flushed through me, I swallowed hard and nodded. It would be easy for Maggie to talk to him, he wasn't one to hide his affections it seemed, and the whole bar must have seen him with her.

I watched him bend to listen to Maggie's whisper. Jesus, seeing him so close to her made me heart sink and soar at the same time…  
ahh, even now he washes over me…  
Once I saw that and then his eyes search me out, just holding me for a second, I knew he would come. At once impressing Tom with me grasp of the depleting stock and at the same time me heart beating faster than clatter of wheels on those steam trains I heard about, I stepped down again into the dark damp cellar and leaned back against the cold wall, trying to stop me chest from rising and falling quite so much.

I was just beginning to think I had made a mistake, when I saw him come round the back door, a glance into all the corners of the cellar, even though he had already seen me. I think I said "I'm here" or something daft like that, and I swear I saw a little grin at the corner of his mouth but he was polite enough not to say "Well of course ye are." 

Instead he caught me arm and led me back to where it was blacker still. It wasn't til me eyes grew accustomed that I could catch the lines of light on his cheek and the flash of his eyes as I looked up at him in front of me, a long way from that walk in the sun only this morning, in the dark now we were, just me and him and nothing else, and now I couldn't quite breathe being so close to him.

Christ, he must have thought I was a soft in the head, I almost forgot to say anything. "Well what is it, lass? Maggie said you heard them coppers…" His eyes watching my face intent all the time I told him what I heard, little frowns between his brow, the skin around his jaw tightening, a shake of his head and the whisper of something I reckon was "bastards" on his lips. A nod when I had finished, just a moment before he spoke, "You're a darlin'. If they think they got the better of us, they will have to think again." A smile on his face, but I could tell he was miles away in the bush.

Well, God help me, whether he knew it right then or not, I had no notion of anything else but that his body was inches from mine, that I only had to move a little bit and he'd be against me. A magnet he was, and that is the only way I can think of to describe it, like he pulled me in just by standing there. But it was something like surprise that crossed his face when he looked down, like he just finished thinking about coppers and Chinese fellas and remembered I was there.

I didn't know what to say and he seemed happy enough to reacquaint himself with me face, just a flick of his eyelashes to further down that I don't think he meant me to see, and his hand moved to the wall behind me. Well me mouth went all dry, he was all around me, well that's what it felt like any how, the warmth and the scent of his body hitting me as his jacket fell open. A flick of MY eyes down that, God help me, I am sure I did mean for him to see.

"Well now Evie, why would you be putting yourself out to help me and Ned and all?" He was teasing me and he knew I was sweating over me answer. "Granted I saved you from walking home with Aaron, and I didn't tell yer Ma that it wasn't just you and Maggie in that room upstairs…"

He let that hang in whatever room there was between us and no mistake, reminding me and himself of what I had seen, watching me squirm and look down at me boots, but for all the lies they ever printed about him, Joe was never one to see someone or something suffer for long. His fingers touched under me chin lifting me head up, brown eyes straight into mine. "Ah now, sure it'll not be that," another smile, "I heard yer old man has no love for coppers."

And he bent to kiss me cheek, just stopping short of me skin. Jesus, I thought I might just reach up and pull him to me, me breath catching, and that was what he was waiting for, brushing his mouth over mine, the hair on his lip rougher against me skin.

But he didn't move away, only little touches that I confess almost had me weeping. I never thought it would feel like that, he had hardly even kissed me and I was shivering. And then, Christ, the tip of his tongue asking me…and I wanted nothing else right then. I had a last look into those eyes before I closed mine and parted me lips to let him.

Well, I might be doing him a disservice now if I made out like as if I did nothing except let him. I remember feeling his hand on me neck, non too soft hands just grazing across me skin, holding me so that his kisses could get deeper into me mouth, but in truth I was holding on too, caught up in what felt like a flash flood down the creek after a summer storm, taking half the bank and everything with it, grabbing the cloth of his jacket so as I didn't get washed away from him.

His kisses..I have reason to pause still now.. the feel of his tongue pressing inside me mouth and how he tasted of the bush in the heat of a summer evening, scorched earth, and wild grass, well that all mixed up with beer and that tobacco he smoked. I could feel myself burning, and willingly throwing it all in to the fire

I felt his other hand slide down me back, and draw me into him, I know I made some noise in the second when me hips felt his, but then he stopped and I was left gasping into thin air, me fingers still gripping his jacket.  
"Jesus! I am sorry, Evie."  
I almost cried, "What are you on about Joe?" but I saw him close his eyes and take a breath, and it was like someone turned the sound up all of a sudden, the noise of the bar which I swear had gone, now blasting back down the stairs and then it started cooking in me head, how he was sorry he kissed me. Oh, it was true enough I never did much kissing before, and anyhow Maggie was right up above us there in the bar and I had no doubt she knew how to kiss just fine.

He must have seen me start to crumple, "Ah no, lass, I don't mean that," his fingers ran over me lips, "I don't mean that at all. Well I am sorry we just…ah Christ!" His arms all around me, and I thought I might just get through anything God decided to rain down on us.

"EVIE! EVIE! Where the hell are ye?" I could hear Tom starting down the stairs, and oh I didn't want to leave there, but I knew I would lose me job if I didn't.

"I'll be right with you, Mr. O'Leary. It's so dark down here is all." I glanced around at Joe and just stood with me hands on a crate, ready to lift it. I just wanted to feel that again and he knew it.  
I could only tighten me knuckles around that wood as he kissed me hair, I swear I could feel him smile, a whispered 'Thank You Evie' before he was gone.

I was surprised me legs worked at all up them stairs, just keeping me head down and taking a few trips to restock the shelves. I couldn't help meself standing for a few seconds with me back against the cellar wall and wondering, wishing he would come back, looking at where we had just been, licking me lips to see if I could still taste him, and closing me eyes at the thought.

Back in the bar up I saw him in the corner talking quiet with Ned Kelly, watched his hands moving from his pockets to Ned's arm to express some point or other and then back to his pockets again, watched him walk over to Maggie and tell her something she seemed to be less than pleased about, a hand on her shoulder and a kiss on her cheek, and then I watched him look up at me, holding me again with his eyes, only this time I could feel it.

With a sudden movement they were out through the door leaving me with 'Joe' just a breath on me lips.

home next


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6 – Of Scabby Dingos and Larrikins**

When Ned left, Tom looked almost relieved and the coppers looked cheated somehow, like they had been waiting for a fight, any excuse to pull them truncheons out, and then had it whipped away from them, leaving them standing there and looking foolish. Those that were still there in the bar breathed a sigh of relief when the coppers drained their glasses and moved out into the road, although by the looks on them coppers' faces you would have pitied whoever it was they ran into on the way.

The bar was emptying fast and as I cleared the tables I had a rare feeling—pleasure at the sight of Michael sitting round with his mates. "Michael can I walk home with you?" I sort of hissed in his ear, but him being him, he wouldn't let me get away with just that.

"Hey Aidan! Evie wants to come home with us. See what did I tell you?" that sort of drunken laugh that made me clench me teeth, and I could have hit him.

"For the love of Mary, will ye stop being an idjut and wait for me to finish me shift will ye?" Something must have filtered through his beer-soaked brain because he looked serious, just for one second mind, and said "aye."

I felt bad for Maggie. I didn't want to quite catch her eye, but also I needed to be on me own, to try and remember it all, to try and feel that kiss again and pretend Joe wasn't gone. I made me excuses and at last got me things and stepped out into the night to find both Michael and Aidan sitting on the step. "What is he doing here still, Michael? We are just walking home is all…Christ," I muttered under me breath and somehow confessing it all to Maggie didn't seem quite so bad compared to walking the few miles back home with these two.

The walk had never seemed so far, with interruptions from Aidan, him trying to grab me hand and start conversations I didn't want to hear, breaking me out of trains of thought and feelings I just wanted to sink into. "Will ye let go of me hand," I said for the hundredth time. I might not have bothered so much if Joe hadn't been in me head and Aidan hadn't been as drunk as Michael; Aidan was an alright looking fella to tell the truth.

Anyhow we were just nearing the rise that leads over to our place when I sees a man on a horse under the wattle tree. As our not-so-merry band drew closer he slid off the saddle and leaned back against the trunk, a flash of sulphur and I just knew it was Joe. Jesus, he had come back for me, and I didn't know whether I was happy or as scared as a roo in a bush fire.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Michael says as we get near enough to speak.

"Michael, for Christ's sake, will you stop that now." I could feel me face burning red.

"No, I won't. I seen you 'round me sister, and she's already spoken for so you'd better just get back home."

Well, I wished the ground had swallowed me…or Michael at the least, but Joe just leaned away from the tree slowly and dropped the rollup he was smoking onto the earth, crushing it under his heel. "Is that right now?" a little grin at me that nearly had me moan, "and who is speaking for Evie then? Seems to me she can talk for herself."

But Michael wasn't listening. "Aidan here, me mate Aidan, that's who she is with," the slur in his words giving him away.

I was pleading with Michael with me eyes, but he was both drunk and, though I shouldn't say it about me own brother, a bit short of a guinea at times. "Michael will you just leave it? I don't need your protection. I'll not be long, get along home now."

"That's just it Evie. Don't you know this fella has girls all over Beechworth, Greta, and Sebastapol? And now since he is sniffing round me sister like a scabby dingo, I'd have to disagree. What d'yer say, Aidan?"

Jesus, well I thought Joe would hit him for sure now, but his voice was level and quiet, "How many women I have is none of your concern, Michael," like that was the final thing to be said on the matter. Me brother just stood there open-mouthed that Joe wasn't denying it, and Aidan looking anywhere but at Joe.

And Joe, well he always did know when to confront something and when his charm might work best. He holds his hand out to shake Michael's, "Though it is a fine goal, to be sure, protecting your sister. If you boys come visiting mine, I'll be sure to keep an eye."

As ever with Joe, you had to think just as hard about what he didn't say as much as those gentle words that crept out of his mouth, once you stopped watching his lips that is. Michael was already halfway down the hill before he realised it and I was still on the "what are you doing here?" part of the conversation when Joe took me hand and sat down. Well there didn't seem anything else to do except sit next to him, all of me nerves jingling with the brush of his hand against me leg.

I don't know whether it was that I had his hand that made me brave, whether it was just the middle of the night after what felt like the longest day I had ever had, or whether it was the way that he made you lose any notion of what you thought you might say or be, but anyhow it just came out of me mouth, "What ARE you doing here, Joe?"

I was listening for everything—the crickets, the wind in the grass, but especially for a sound from him—and I swear I heard his lips part and his breath in, "Well, lass, I could still feel that kiss…"

Holy Mary! If I could feel me body respond to his words, then when I glanced sideways at him sitting there next to me with his dark eyes smiling as deep as his mouth, well now I flushed all over me skin, every inch of it. But I hadn't finished yet, clearing me throat, "And do you have women all over Beechworth, Greta, and Sebastapol?"

This time he didn't say it was none of my concern; what he did was let go of me hand and lie back to look at the sky. I could have cursed! Ah, I did want to know, but at the same time, whether he had kissed all the women in the whole of Australia was less important than whether he was gonna kiss ME next. The wind was catching his curls and the moonlight touching the folds of cloth over his body, and I wanted to touch him, but whilst I was busy getting washed away, he had obviously been thinking.

"Well I'll not lie to you, Evie. Besides Maggie, there are others for sure, but you'll not need to know all their names."

I think I winced, but the meanings of it all were coming thick and fast and it was on the tip of me tongue to say "sorry" for even asking, but I dragged me mind back to what I needed to know. "And what about Maggie? Will you be marrying her?"

I saw him sit up, and he looked at me quizzical, "Did she tell you that, lass?" Christ, he was beautiful.

"No, no she didn't, I was just thinking…I thought maybe after all…yer know," stumbling over me words like an idjut meself, but I needed to hear it from him.

He just kept looking at me, all over me eyes and me cheeks and me lips as if he was already touching me. "Ah no, we'll not be marrying." 

There was a pause while he let me think on that, and maybe himself too, about Maggie, and then he said quiet as you like and I wasn't even sure it was to me, "Whether she knows it or not, she wants more than a larrikin like me. That's why she only ever needs to ask whose horse I rode in on and not who I've been with."

Well, I could have cried, hearing him and thinking of her weeping about how he wasn't there to cuddle her in the morning, and how he was answering me when I don't suppose I had any business asking anyhow.

"So what are you thinking, Evie? Is that what you need to know, fer now anyways?" Jesus, he could see all through me with those eyes, and he just smiled, picking up me chin with his fingers. "Anyhow, it's my turn for a question now. Ah, what shall it be? Well since it's still on me mind… Are you gonna let me feel that kiss again before yer Ma comes up that hill with a shotgun?"

His hand just ran down me spine soft to help me decide exactly what the answer was, and I let his arms carry me down next to him. I don't mind admitting I was shivering with the wait and the nearness of his body, before he even touched me.

And then he did, and I closed me eyes to feel his hands stroking over me arms and me neck while he kissed me, all gentle and breathless, only this time, now so far from day and work and me family and me normal life it seemed, I kissed him back. Not that I knew what to do exactly, but Christ, it just seemed like natural, and the more I did, the harder he pressed back against me tongue, and the tighter he held me.

Me head was getting dizzy for feeling him getting lost to it all too, and I got a notion of why I was there—beyond him being the finest looking man I ever saw. But because he made me, Evie McBride, feel strong, not just because I could make him want me, but that by having him I would find something of myself. And well maybe you don't believe me to hear all this about kissing and such, but it wasn't simply about them sort of relations between men and women, but about everything else too.

Ah! Listen to me now…I am not so sure I worked all that out there and then, I've had some years to think on it and no mistake. I was also caught on the feel of those curls through me fingers when I finally got up the courage to reach up and try, caught on how his touch made me skin tingle like it just got christened, little sweeps of his thumbs around where me buttons stopped that made me gasp. Oh and Jesus! When his leg brushed against mine as he moved closer it sent a shake through me, and I swear he knew that had he already asked…Anyhow I suppose you could say that with all that, it was a wonder I heard the voice that I did, dragging me back to the hill by our selection.

I sat up suddenly, Joe already on his feet. "Mary? Is that you?"

"Evie...thank God!" She was panting and bent double catching her breath, gasping out words that I eventually worked out. "Fitzpatrick is at the house, him and another copper…they are asking for you."

"What?" was the best I could manage.

"Aye, well he says he knows it was you who told the Kelly Gang that the police was onto them." Joe was changed in a moment, it was hard to imagine that only a few seconds before he had been kissing me sweet, now he was tall and straight and the moon was finding sharp edges.

"And why would they be thinking that?" I don't think Mary had any option but to answer him even though he'd never spoken to her before in her life and this was no "how do you do?"

Mary was panting and whispering both, that Fitzpatrick had been to the Kelly's and found the horses gone, figured someone had warned them, and that he knew it was me, that he heard me name in the bar, and anyhows he'd been already to see Tom O'Leary and found me gone, and that about put the tin lid on it. The coppers intended to take me to the station and question me.

Speaking quickly now she says me Da went out to fetch the whiskey to keep the coppers occupied like, well everyone knew Fitzpatrick liked a drink, and they seemed content to sit and wait for me to come home. All the while she was talking I kept looking at Joe, but his eyes was fixed on our shack, some decision being argued for and against in his head, whether to go down there or not, I shouldn't wonder.

"Oh Christ, Mary! What'll I do?" I admit I was scared out of me wits. The thought of being taken off by those coppers who didn't flinch from touching you in a public bar, never mind what would happen in a cell, and I felt me skin go cold. We all knew stories of how they did their interrogating alright. You were already guilty by the fact of being Catholic anyhows, but the manner of getting information from yer, well I suppose that was different if you were a woman.

"Ma whispered to me to come find you. Michael nearly gave it away with all his cursing when he got back, but anyhow, I slipped out the back while Da was talking. She said to tell you to go to Aunt Bridget in Oxley, says start along the way, wait at the crossing over the King River, and she'll send Jimmy out to catch up to you as soon as them coppers are gone."

I was not sure how much more God intended to fill this day with, but right then me eyes were wide and scared and angry too, I couldn't believe how it had all turned so quickly and so badly. A bit sorry for meself, I said, "I don't know the road to Oxley, Mary, not in the dark leastways."

Then Joe's voice was clear in the night air, sharp and full of the sort of hatred that it takes years to build up, "I am sorry, lass, this isn't your fight, and if Ned was here, we'd go see them off, the bloody cowards. They've nothing on us, the bastards! It's just like they always do, come up bragging and carrying on like they got evidence—and they never have—we made certain of it anyhow, the horses are all gone."

And as scared as I was, it all welled up in me chest—me Da, Jimmy, those coppers spitting "selector scum," the shit-pile of mud we had to dig, and then me Da all over again, and well like I say, Joe always dragged whatever it was that was real out of yer. "But it is Joe, it is me fight. I am Irish, and if I had anything like the faith me Ma says I should, it would be the Virgin Mary guiding me. Those coppers and the squatters always make it our fight, don't they? Isn't that what this is about?"

Mary was just beside herself, "Evie, Ma says you gotta go! Will ye just go before they see you?"

But Joe was looking at me, thinking about them scales and the weights I had just placed in them, wondering what they were made of, and then a nod, "You'd be safer if I took you." 

Well I nearly laughed out loud, and I know he caught it too. "You know they will ask around, Evie, find out where all yer family live too and come knocking like they have tonight, just for the hell of it, just because they didn't catch Ned or me, or maybe just because they can. Evie lass, you need to get out of here."

And then the penny dropped good and proper, he was asking me to go with him. If I had felt a lurch across a line when I told Aaron me name all those weeks ago, now I felt like I was at the side of some ravine about to topple on account of the height and the wind all round me. I didn't hardly notice he was guiding me arm back to where his horse was still tied to the wattle tree, but as he swung himself into the saddle I caught me breath.

"Joe, I can't go off with you, I have to go to Aunt Bridget's. I have to do what me Ma wants." 

I watched his brow furrow, Christ knows what he was thinking, but whatever it was, he decided to keep it to himself. "Then let me take you, Evie." His hand stretched out to me and he pulled me up into the saddle in front of him.

"Tell Ma that Joe Byrne is taking me, Mary." Just for a moment it crossed me mind that this might not give me Ma any comfort at all, but well, even if it wouldn't, I knew I didn't want to walk there by meself, and whatever else she thought of Joe, she knew he could ride a horse and get me there without falling in the river.

We set out at quite a pace, seemed like he wanted to put some miles between us and the coppers as fast as he could. Me mind suddenly lighting on each new consequence of all this—I would lose me job for certain, and then when would I see me Da, and after that what about me few belongings. There was only one thing certain, and that was Joe's body against mine, and I pulled his arm tighter just to make sure.

And Christ it was better than walking anywhere as I recall. There I was sitting between his legs, not to put too fine a point on it, with one arm around me waist and me back pressed against his chest, and if it hadn't been for the coppers, I might have burst with happiness.

We slowed down after we crossed the King River, the plains spread out in front of us and Oxley just ahead. It had been a long time since I had been there, but I don't think me mind wanted to remember, in truth. Everything had changed in this one day. For as long as I could remember, I always knew more or less what would happen the next day, the next week, the next season, and now I didn't know anything, not even what would happen in the next few hours, nothing. And it all caught up with me because I knew he would be gone soon too.

We were nearing Aunt Bridget's shack on the outskirts of the town when I heard me voice crack, "Joe, will I see you again?"

He leaned forward and kissed me neck, just soft, "Aye, of course you will lass, but I can't say when. The coppers will be on our backs, and well, we found a new route into New South Wales over the Murray River for the horses and cattle, yer know, to make some money and all. I did come back for that kiss Evie, but also to tell you that we'll be gone awhile this time."

And he just let me cry quiet, holding me tight, "Ah it will be alright, you'll see now," but nothing else either of us could do anyhow, life being just like that. When I finally pointed out Aunt Bridget's shack Joe slipped out of the saddle and lifted me down, and for the second time that night I clung onto his jacket.

"Evie…go and knock. I best be going." A finger on me lips when he saw me start to sob,  
"Ah, come on now, you're Seamus McBride's daughter, isn't that right?" I nodded a little, while he smiled at me, "That's what I thought."

Joe wrapped me up in his arms and I could only just breathe, warm and as safe as anything felt right then and just holding on. "Goodbye Evie," and before I could stop him he was in the saddle again. I stood and watched him ride off into the dark, rooted to the spot as sure as one of those weeds that seemed so fond of our potato field.

Me Aunt Bridget's shack was all dark when I rapped on the window for what seemed like an age, and I swear she didn't recognise me when she first opened the door, but considering the late hour and the fact that I was making no sense anyhow, she just wrapped me in a blanket and let me be.

When I woke a few hours later I could hear Jimmy in the room, and I pretended to be asleep.  
"What was she thinking, Jimmy? Cathleen should ha' known I can't keep the girl."

"Ah, don't you be worrying yerself, Bridget. She says to give you this bit of money, but she already sent word to an old friend of hers, a Mrs. Rankin I think she said, whose husband owns a shop to see if she can get Evie a job there. And Ma says it's far enough away from trouble, being in Jerilderie."

I listened to these plans being made for me and held the blanket tight, willing Joe's arms back around me again, and if I missed the feel of him already, it would be another 3 long years before I ever saw him again.

home next


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7 - Gunsmoke and Beeswax**

Three years—well it was a lifetime and that's for sure—three years wasted, that's how I feel sometimes when I think of him. But those years changed me, and just maybe that was part of the plan.

If I had thought things had been sent into a spin by God that one summer day in 1876 when I had to leave Beechworth, I didn't know the half of it. It was less than a week before Jimmy arrived back at Bridget's with what passed for me belongings, a note from me Da saying not to worry written in that thick heavy hand he had, the address where I was to call, and a note for Mr. and Mrs. Rankin, shopkeepers in Jerilderie. I presumed that the note confirmed me as Aoife McBride, eldest daughter of Cathleen, hardworking ex-barmaid at the Commercial in Beechworth. I doubted it said "running away from the coppers and fond of consorting with known villains" since this was unlikely to get them to offer me some work and lodgings, though it wasn't far from the truth.

But I didn't want to be an ex-barmaid at the Commercial. I wanted to be back there with Tom and Maggie and all them old boys. I wanted to be cuddled up with Maggie after a Friday shift and laughing with her about things that now seemed so far away I wasn't even sure I hadn't dreamt them, as if that was some other Evie, and maybe it was.

I missed me Da and Mary, Sean, and even Michael. Aunt Bridget had proved to be good company, and I wondered how she had ever come from the same stock as me Ma, but even so, now that me Ma wasn't there, I felt the lack of her as well. And if all that wasn't enough, to put the tin lid on it, I had felt him, Joe Byrne, and now he was gone too.

Jimmy, on the other hand, was full of it, and on the long ride to Jerilderie he talked to me like he never had before, as if I already was this someone else, no child anymore but a co-conspirator, a rebel, a comrade, whatever you want to call it, and maybe you just want to call it criminal, but anyways I wasn't quite sure yet whether I wanted to be one or not, in truth. He told me all about the horse stealing and the cattle rebranding, the contacts he had who would sell the horses on to folks in New South Wales, and how the coppers would be pulling their beards out with the madness of nearly, but not quite, catching him. He was a bit quieter when he talked about home. Me Ma had been sobbing and blaming me Da for getting me work in the bar in the first place, and him, well Jimmy said Da had been drinking, and for Jimmy to notice, I guessed it must have been more than a few.

Anyhow, all that's another story. At the time I was nodding but really thinking about how the miles were growing between all that I knew and where I was headed. I could feel me stomach squeezing by the time we rode into Jerilderie, bigger again than Beechworth, streets off the main one there were, women in fine dresses and bonnets and it weren't Sunday neither.

Ah, I could tell ye about the Rankin's and me time in their shop. Truth was old Mr. Rankin was more friendly than his wife, a bit too friendly as a matter of fact, and she seemed to think I was aiming to step into her shoes as quick as a flash. Nothing was further from me mind, on account of the fact he was big and hairy and for all their airs and graces, they was scratching a living like the rest of us. Anyhow, by the time I took me leave of there, I was about full of "the inventory" and "the books." The only thing I liked there was the newspapers which arrived once a week. Me mouth was open wide reading the headlines, squinting me eyes to read about places in Europe called things I couldn't even say, and always there were pages about what was called the Indian Wars in America. 

Me Da always said that if he'd been put on a boat, why couldn't it have sailed to America instead of this hole, but from what I could see in the glances I took at the papers on the counter, things didn't seem so good there either, well least not for the Indians, as they was called. I read about men called things like Chief Dull Knife and Crazy Horse, massacres, and what was it now?... Reservations, aye that's it! The big pictures that the little newspaper type planted in my brain would leave my head spinning and then I would look up shocked to find meself still in the Rankin's shop.

I could tell ye about the big house I worked at next as a scullery maid, preparing endless meat and scaling fish and scouring pots and pans 'til me own fingers were raw. I wondered how they ever ate it all, well that and how it was indecent to have so much and care about it so little. For my part, I saved whatever I could of my so-called wages and kept it under me bed to take home. Funny I still thought of home as being with me Ma and Da, well I did until I got that little room at the bar.

See after working as scullery maid, I went back to doing what I was most suited for—serving beer and wiping tables—in The Royal Mail it was, just one of the five bars in town, and for the first time in months I had me own place where I could take a breath, just shut the door and dream and wonder. Sometimes I sat on me little metal bed and just stared for hours at the walls before I went to sleep, it being the only time when no one was telling me to do this or do that…"fetch another crate will ye Evie", "work another shift will ye Evie", "stand on yer head and smile at the same time Evie!" All the same, me little room reminded me of Maggie, and of Joe, with its little light and the bed, it even had a small closet. And well, I suppose I don't mind telling ye that Father O'Donaghue's face had long since stopped troubling me in the night.

Oh I had some relations with what you might call men, it was just part of how I lived, how we all did, young women working all round them everyday. I have no tale to tell ye, not like Maggie had to me, and I half-wished she never had told me neither because what I got the first time made me cry. There was no rag to wash myself with, no warm cuddle, and certainly no feeling like I had fainted with pleasure, Christ! Ah, he wasn't unkind…well anyhow, the less said the better. After that I went with a fella every now and again, I don't even rightly know why, maybe I was hoping that one of them would make me feel better than Joe could, better than just the kisses Joe had given me, but they never did and the trying made me feel, well, like it was all nothing anyhow.

Months turned into a year, I even went to visit me Ma and Da once or twice on a Sunday, but while we cried and hugged and told all the news, there was too much gone by already that I couldn't even try and catch up with, even if I ran with all me strength. But anyways, I shouldn't complain, I had the whole day off and me Ma did always cook me favourite stew, thick and full of tatties it were, and I'd smile at her and make her happy. The money I pressed into her hand brought a smile to her face too, though I never could quite look in me Da's face as I handed it over. And when the sun set and Jimmy took me back over the river, it always felt as if there were a hundred conversations that hadn't been finished, like them drunks in the bar that start to tell you a story, and in the time it takes to serve them a pint they'd gone and lost the thread of it. Well all except once, which I am just coming to.

One time me Da sneaked out to tell me that he still went to the Commercial and that they'd all been asking about me. He tapped his nose with a smile. "Maggie says to say hello when I saw you, and well, I had occasion to thank Joseph for making sure you was safe that night." It all seemed so long ago even then, but I smiled back all the same, although in truth me eyes were searching Da's face. He looked older than the picture in me mind, Christ, the whole place looked older and more tattered too.

"Ah, did ye? And what did he say, Da?" 

He started to say and then frowned, his eyes flashing with something like pain and anger all in one, forgetting what he'd been holding onto for so long, what he was waiting to tell me. I was aching, watching him play it in his mind. I could see that he wanted me to still need him for something, me—no longer his little Evie standing right there but someone else, a woman grown—and it had all just hit him that here he was, unable to do that very thing.

A pause when I thought he might explode before his beer bottle hit the wall making me step back. "He said…ahh what did he say?…I tell ye, Evie, I am losing me effin mind."

"Da, it's alright, it doesn't matter." Me hand went out to touch his arm and I could have cried, after all me Da had put up with in his life, here he was more bowed than I ever saw him before all because he couldn't remember. "It doesn't matter, Da."

And for the first time in years I heard him shout at me. "Yes it does, Evie!" A breath before he sighed, "It bloody does because he said 'You must be proud of her, Mr. McBride.' Aye that's what he said, and I am, lass, I am. Yer mother blames Joseph, of course she does, but well, you and I know them coppers' would be after anyone who as much as blinks in their direction. I am past it Evie, I know I am," just a stroke of his hand on me hair, "but you'll do the right thing, you are me daughter…"

Well, me eyes were filling up, I had never done a thing to make him proud of me, not anything that came to me mind right then anyhow, but me protests were all swallowed by him holding his hand up. "And Joseph he gave me something to give you. We'd not seen any of them for a good long while, Tom was breathing a sigh of relief I can tell ye, but then Joseph came in the bar with that Ned and Aaron…" Me Da went off behind the shack to where he kept his beer and returned holding a small card box

"What is it?" I wiped me hand across me face to soak up the wet and salt that was stinging me skin now, and frowned at him.

"Take a look. Seems like a funny sort of a thing to give to a girl," a smile from him, "a woman, I was meaning. But then Patrick always did say that Joseph was a law unto himself, even as a lad."

In the shadow that was now threatening to wrap us up, I held the box in me hand and lifted the top, a little tremble in me fingers. What was in there just made me frown all the more, well maybe I was expecting that he'd stolen me a wedding band or something, maybe me heart missed a beat or two with some silly notion, I can't say for sure, but anyhow it was more beautiful than anything made by a pair of hands. Inside lay a tiny blue egg protected in some torn pieces of paper and lying as perfect as the day he put it in there. A flash went through me mind of his fingers holding that delicate, thin thing carefully so as not to break it.

Me Da's voice made me jump. "Like I say, a funny thing to give ye, but he said you would understand." I nodded but I am not sure that I did understand right then, not other than that Joe had given me something, something important, and that meant he hadn't forgotten me either.

Aside from the Rankin's shop, a bar really was the best place to work if ye wanted to keep up with all that was going on in Victoria, New South Wales, aye maybe the whole of Australia, on account of the gossip and the occasional traveller passing through. Me ears pricked up every time I heard anything about coppers and horse stealing, well ye never knew what you might hear. I was on one of me many extra shifts that week in early summer of 1878, when I heard news that made me skin come out on goose pimples and me stomach turn over.

An older man was sitting at the bar, been travelling he said, selling bibles and curiosities all over "Queen Victoria's Colony," like he was proud of his contribution to such a place. Anyhow, I wasn't paying him much mind, taken a dislike to his smarmy smile and his thin fingers I had, when he says, "And I have it on good authority that them Kelly boys are being hunted for the shooting of a Constable Fitzpatrick, don't you know."

I think I stopped breathing, it took a few seconds before I realised that beer was flowing over the top of the glass I had under the tap. The man knew he had the attention of us all, and played on it, taking a long gulp of his beer before he continued. "It just so happens I had a very advantageous financial dealing with Moss Finch, the maker of some very fine saddles over in Mansfield." Just to emphasise the point he insisted on patting his pocket, a thin smile on his lips.

"Where was I? Ah yes. Moss Finch had a need for a quantity of beeswax to smooth the leather straps he was making for the undertaker, on special request of the Victoria Police. What do you say to that then? Seems those Kelly boys and a couple of their criminal, well one hesitates to call them 'friends' since that would point to a degree of refinement that they do not possess, anyway I hear there were four of them on the run, which I think you will agree proves they are guilty as sin itself, and Sergeant Kennedy does not intend taking the buggers alive."

Well I don't suppose that man had ever been treated to as many beers before, but it had little to do with anyone wanting him as a mate, and all to do with wanting to hear more. In any case it were better for his sake that he were drinking in the Royal Mail and not the Woolpack down the road, I doubt that he'd have got out of there alive, Mary Jordan running one of the roughest bars in New South Wales and well known for her rebel views. In the course of the evening the man told us how those "blaggards" as he called them had shot and injured poor Constable Fitzpatrick who had been lawfully going about his business, how Ned's Ma had been arrested with a babe in her arms, how Ned's sisters were an awful bunch of banshees, and how the coppers were right at this very moment, no doubt, bringing the bodies back on the undertaker's, furnished with his own beeswax, a fact that seemed to make him extremely happy.

I felt sick to me stomach, suddenly unable to add up the pennies for the price of a drink and fumbling over the glasses. What I needed to know, and what he was keeping from us, if he knew, was who the others were, Jesus, whether Joe was on the run with Ned, whether Joe was lying on one of those stretchers too. Despite how this man made me skin crawl, I talked to him, made out I was interested in his business and what he sold. And not to blow me own pipe, but the attentions of a young woman who, if you don't think me vain to say, was prettier than most who would have come his way, loosened his tongue some more.

But I must not have been as clever as I thought I was, and he guessed that I had more than a passing interest in what he had to say. He hinted that he knew more and started to look at me in that way that men do, like they think you are smaller and weaker then them, at their mercy if you please, and all the while I was on the edge of tears wondering about Joe. "I might be of a mind to tell you some more after you finish work," he says, "got lodgings I have upstairs."

God help me—Joe, if you are listening, well sometimes I can still feel you, so maybe you are—I couldn't do it, and for all that I wanted to know everything that he did, I knew that you would understand, so I told him to eff off and held me hand as steady as I could until the end of me shift.

It was the worst night of me life, well I thought so at the time, I couldn't sleep a wink, opening and closing that box with the egg, and for the first time in years, praying to God. And whilst we'd not spoke in a long time, He should have been impressed with all that I offered Him. Christ, I swapped my soul for Joe's that night, well I figured that up 'til now I had sinned the least. I could almost smell the gun smoke and the beeswax.

But as the days and weeks went on and there was no news of the capture nor death of the "Kelly Gang" as they were beginning to be called, me spirits started to rise and I might even have started to believe that bastard had made it all up. Then, months after, I heard something that brought it all back to the front of me mind.

Me mate Rosie, who worked in the Woolpack, tells me that the Kelly boys were still on the run, and that Mary Jordan was offering cut-price drinks to celebrate as another week passed that they were free. Rosie lowered her voice though when she told me the next bit, and I felt the ground move under me feet. "They killed three coppers though, Evie, shot 'em dead in cold blood at Stringybark Creek, that's what people are saying anyhow."

The stories grew and grew as the days passed, how Ned had cut off Sergeant Kennedy's ear, how they had all put bullets in the coppers' bodies to make a point, how they'd stolen all the coppers' personal belongings, and how they got away with a whole load of guns, in particular a Spencer repeating rifle. I confess I had no idea what one of those was, but it seemed to be the object of some wonder to the men sitting at the bar. The "Mansfield Murderers" they became, though truthfully most of the people who called them that didn't seem to care much either way.

It weren't long after that that I woke up one morning to the sound of hammering outside. Half asleep still I opened the window to be greeted by the face of Ned Kelly, only it looked like the person drawing it needed some more practice, well that and a decent likeness to work from. Ned's face was pulled all askew to make him look mean and cruel around the eyes and underneath it all a notice, "WANTED" it said in big letters that I didn't have to squint to read, and then a sum of money that made me stomach churn. Whatever they had or hadn't done, and me Da had taught me enough about the lies that could be told about ye, there was no doubting that the coppers were intent on taking a price.It was sort of easier once I knew for certain Joe was alive, and the news from Euroa confirmed it

"_Bank Held Up By Kelly Gang"_ it said on the newspaper headline. I scoured the print and then in one lurch of me stomach I saw his name.

_One of the gang, by the name of Byrne, stood guard over the prisoners, all of them threatened by the guns trained on them, while the other three ruffians went to Euroa Bank. Mr. and Mrs. Scott could only watch helplessly as the bank vault was raided and then suffer themselves and their children to be taken hostage._

I had never bought a newspaper before, but this one I did so I could read it over and over in me room, like if I read it enough it would tell me more, reward me for me perseverance or something, but it never did so. I took to frequenting the Woolpack in me time off. The people there, for the most part anyhow, had sympathies with the Kelly Gang, "our boys" they called them, and whilst I said only a little about how I knew Joe, it felt better to be with people who didn't want to see them dead, and to hear his name. It helped me to hear his name.

It were just the beginning of the new year when at the end of a shift I had an envelope shoved into me hand by the landlord. "Been around a bit by the looks of it." I just frowned at the thing in my hands, the writing nothing like me Da's, a stamp that I could hardly read the date but looked like it had been posted in November, and a couple of addresses of sorts crossed out and new ones squeezed into the spaces.

I don't think I ever took the stairs so quick, bolting the door behind me and sitting on me bed just looking at it, I could almost hear me own heart, never mind feel it in my chest. Turning it over and over in me hands then, almost too afraid to open it in case it wasn't from him until I finally slid me finger under the seal.

Christ, I can't tell you what it felt like just to see "Joe" written at the bottom of the page. Carefully formed letters covered the page, but I could hardly read for crying, I sort of didn't care what it said at all, but when a splash of a tear hit the page and ran into the ink I was brought right back there. Let me read some of it to yer.

_Dear Evie,_

_I always thought a letter should start with a "how do you do? but as I don't even know where you are for sure, whether you would even want to hear from me anymore, nor whether you will ever read this, there is no point in asking, so I will just tell ye that I miss you, lass. I have seen your Da. He said you were safe, and of that I am glad. Even thinking of you holding this paper is enough to make me smile. I hated to say goodbye to you, and I meant to come to you as soon as things had quieted down, but I never thought it would be this long. You will have heard, no doubt, the circumstances of why._

_I wish to tell you some things, Evie, the truth about the matters you know about, and to make you understand some others too._

He says here about how Fitzpatrick had been drunk and full of lies as ever, that Ned had in fact dressed Fitzpatrick's hand after he was shot. In great detail, ah that was always Joe, he tells how Scanlon, Lonigan, and Kennedy came to be killed, about the undertakers he smashed up with his own hands, and then

_Believe me, I had nothing more than a broken stick wrapped in a blanket at the time. We wanted their horses, and they fired at us. Dan was injured, and the rest of us so sickened by the blood, smell, and the flies, not to say the offence we had committed, that it was like our souls were jumping in our skins. Ned said not much else but that he wanted them to surrender. He even took down a letter from Kennedy to send to his wife, but the words got washed away when we tried to cross the Murray River. Poor bugger. _

_Evie, I know we will have to take our justice when it comes, but you understand that it will not come about at the hands of the Victoria Police. I haven't got a stick anymore, lass, but one of their Spencer rifles. They mean to kill us, and if I have to go, I am taking as many of them bastards as I can with me._

He writes how they have been moving around the colony, sometimes so close to the coppers that it is a wonder they didn't ask for a match, how angry they were about the mass arrests and then, well there is this section here that I can't count how many times I have read.

_My heart, my skin, my thoughts—they are all red raw, bruised, and in need of soothing. I can't drink or smoke enough, and Christ, I have tried my best. All I can do while I sit here by this godforsaken dry creek listening for sound of hooves or guns is tell you what is in my head. I need to kiss you again, Evie, feel your skin under my fingers, and breathe that warm scent you have. I'll not lie, I have found comforts where I could, and I am thankful for that, some helped me more than others but I always wake up feeling the same. _

_You have lit fires in cold bush nights that have kept the damp from my bones, and whether you know it or not, calmed my sleep when I was raging. I can see you blushing now, you always look even prettier when you do that. Forgive my frankness, and I hope you believe me when I say it is not all about relations of that sort, but you gave me something else and I want to return it._

_I will look for you and trust that you still feel the same as you once did. _

_Joe_

Well I don't need to tell you a single thing about how I felt right then except that I was aching to find him, make him smile at me, and feel him against me body. The time that followed was almost painful with want, in truth I can't quite remember the passing of it.

That letter was the first and last I heard from Joe Byrne until a day in February when I felt me mouth drop and me feet root into the ground. As I went about me business one morning, I looked up and there in broad daylight on the main street of Jerilderie, I saw Constable Richardson with something less than a happy face, and on either side of him was Joe Byrne and Ned Kelly dressed in blue with silver buttons. And Christ... oh I can't stop meself smiling now… I think he was as shocked as I was! But Joe being Joe, he recovered first.

"What's the matter, Evie, you never fancy a copper before?"

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	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8 – Burning Bushes**

Well I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Christ! Joe looked good and that was despite the copper's uniform he wore, which now as I recall was a little tight, Sergeant Devine, who I learnt after was locked up in the cells in his underclothes, being a slighter man. Joe…well he was a little thinner in the face than the last time I saw him and his curls straying every which way for sure, but still those eyes that looked inside you and that smile, Holy Mary, that smile was enough to make you lie down right there and then. But it weren't just that- after reading his letter I knew he needed me too, though I confess I wasn't quite sure how much.

There was a moment or two when we just stood there looking, Joe reminding Ned of me name and Ned grinning at me. "Aye, I remember, lass, the one that saved us them horses in Greta. Sold them for a good price too, we did."

But I was having the same trouble as Joe, not looking anywhere but straight ahead taking in the changes that the three years had made. I don't mind telling ye my heart was pounding against me chest- all the years of waiting for him was over. I couldn't stop grinning and me fingers were aching to touch him, so I just stepped up brazen as you like, me hands on his shoulders and kissed him, right there in front of Constable Richardson and in the middle of the street, and nothing had ever felt better.

All those empty, harsh, and unfeeling kisses that I had barely responded to over the last 3 years were just gone in an instant, he made me want him and I didn't care if all the coppers in New South Wales nor every citizen of Jerilderie saw it. I could feel Joe smile as he kissed me back, his hand on me neck, just gentle and soft like he wanted to make sure I knew it was about more than them sort of relations, but all the time, well, I knew he could feel all that too. The material of me dress just brushing against his hips it were, and I thought I might just burst into flames like one of them bushes in the desert that suddenly just get too hot. But it weren't God speaking to me, it was Joe, he always seemed to know when you felt like that.

"Ah well now, Evie, I got me answer then," Joe whispered in me hair and he pulled me into his chest, held me tight there, and just let the fall of his breath match mine. I could have stayed there all day, be like one of those statues you see in the big towns right in the middle of the main street. But I don't think the authorities are ever gonna allow a statue of him, all them kings and queens and military folk taking up all the room, well that and I don't suppose they would want to celebrate a man who stole their money, burnt their precious mortgages, and killed their coppers no matter what the reasons was. Oh but I am getting ahead of meself now.

"Joe, sure I am not one for breaking up a happy reunion, Christ knows we could do with some cheer, but in case it had slipped yer mind, mate, we are on our the way to rob the bank." Ned was bending to speak to him. Makes me smile now, maybe Joe just did forget for a while.

"You're robbing the bank?"

"Well lass, we haven't joined the force if that's what yer thinking. Constable Richardson here has been showing us round the town, while we got the measure of it all."

I just stood back a bit, but Joe's hands never left me, not for a second, just catching a curl at the back of me neck or touching me shoulder while Ned explained that they had come to Jerilderie because there was a press in town and they needed to print a letter to send to a judge, telling the truth, outlining their grievances, and so forth. Oh and another 500 hundred copies to distribute so that no one in the colony would be under any misapprehension about the lies of Constable Fitzpatrick and the injustice done to Ned's mother.

A smile and then Ned finishes by saying, "But seeing as we are here and our friends and family have been blacklisted from their selections and locked up leaving crops to rot in the fields, well we thought we might just relieve the bank of some of its ill-gotten gains, what do you say to that now Evie?"

I grinned back, me eyes flitting to look at Constable Richardson who was getting more and more agitated but seeming unable to move a muscle apart from those on his face that made him frown. Joe and Ned didn't seem to pay him any mind, sure they had guns but couldn't give a damn anyhow, like it was natural as anything to kidnap a copper. Maybe after all these months they just lost any fear of men like him who never stood as tall as them, well that's if they had any fear in the first place.

"Where are ye staying, Evie?" Joe's eyes were dark and full of everything we was gonna do, so much that I could feel the ground shift under me, "So I know where to find ye?"

"Next to the bank. I work next to the bank in the Royal Mail."

Ned shook his head, "Well now there's a turn up eh? I'll be needin you to serve the good people of Jerilderie some beer, Evie lass, and since the bank has a lot of our money anyhow we may as well let them buy us all a drink or two." A hand on Constable Richardson's shoulder and it was obviously time, Ned thought, to get gone.

Me fingers were in amoungst Joe's and I couldn't quite bring meself to let go. "Let me come too, just let me come with you," I didn't care if it sounded like begging. Little echoes of when he had asked me to come with him flashing through me mind, he had wanted me then and I wasn't ready, not ready to throw everything into the fire, but with God as me witness I was ready now. I could see the silent discussion between him and Ned, those two so close that they didn't need to speak, and then it was decided, just like that, where me place needed to be and at that one moment I knew too. As much as I wanted Joe, they was outlaws and there was no time right now for a stroll along the boards like I seen those ladies do. If Ned wanted beers served, he was gonna have them, and Joe…well me and Joe would be together before the dawning of the next day, of THAT I had made up me mind."While we are holding up the bank, lass, we need you to keep the hostages happy, well I don't suppose they'll be too upset anyhow. Will you do it for me, Evie?"  
Well he and I knew that I could cut off me own arm if that was what he wanted.  
"Will you do it for me, Evie?" Christ, I can still hear it clear in me head, but I didn't need to do anything to make such a drama, just had to say "yes" and he smiled, a stroke of Joe's fingers down me face and I could have cried with longing for him.

The next few hours I spent pulling many a pint and laughing, me smile so wide it nearly broke me jaw, all the while watching the door for Joe, but instead seeing Ned's brother Dan turn up with more unwitting hostages. And Joe had been right—no one seemed to be too worried, customers of the bank nor the staff, well except for the school teacher, he'd been made to sign a notice giving all the kids the day off in honour of the Kelly Gang. Mr. Cox, the bar owner, once he got over the shock of it all, seemed to think the circumstances could do nothing but good for the Royal Mail, and he puffed up at the promise of being known as the bar where the Kelly Gang holed up.

I even saw Joe once when him and Ned arrived with the bank manager, Mr. Tarleton. He didn't look quite so pleased as the rest of the customers we had now and that's for sure, all red faced and sweating. Everyone else was hanging on Ned's words, laughing as he threw a bag of sovereigns on the bar shouting, "Drink up boys!" like a holiday Sunday it were, except that we hadn't just been to mass. Then they was gone again to go cut down the telegraph poles, Dan said.

At last Joe comes up to the bar, but he wasn't smiling. "Evie, come with me lass, we need yer help." Well I was out of there like a shot out of one of them pistols, not even a word to Mr. Cox, and Joe had me hand in his running across the street. "That bastard Gill the printer, he's gone and run off, the bloody coward. Christ, we have the whole of Jerilderie contented and staying put, and the only man we need has effin' run away!"

The print shop was empty apart from Ned and Mrs. Gill. Ned's hands and his eyes were nervous even if the rest of him wasn't, turning the papers in his hands over and over. Mrs. Gill was beside the printing press with her hands on her hips, an argument going on between her and Ned about the fact that nothing could be done, her husband couldn't print the document if he weren't there, then her attention turned to me. "Evie McBride! What are you doing here with these scoundrels?"

Joe, he just looked at me like it was alright to say that he had made me come, but I didn't, I didn't want to say that 'cos it weren't true, so I just looked her back in the eye, " They are the Kelly Gang not scoundrels, Mrs. Gill. Ned here, his mother is locked up for nowt, and they have been hunted by the police intent on killing them. I'd say I am here because they need us folk to do what we can to help them."

Well she just stared at me. "What can you expect from a barmaid?" kind of seeping out of her mouth with all the poison of one of them funnel-web spiders me Ma was always telling us to watch out for.

Without seeing him I could feel Joe step forward, the air all still, but she were nothing and I put me hand out to touch him. "What do you want me to do?"

Jesus, but it was hard work! Joe was off trying to track down Mr. Gill, and Ned was reading out words from his letter while I struggled with the type, little pieces of lead letters all upside down and placed back to front, and all the while Mrs. Gill bellyaching about how her husband wouldn't like his type being messed up. Felt quite proud of meself when I at last got the first little bit done.

_Dear Sirs,_

_I wish to acquaint you with some of the occurrences of the present, past, and future._

Well it seemed to take hours already just that little bit, and there were still pages more to go that I could see in his hand. Me eyes were straining to see the letters, trying to put them in order and straight with all the dots and spaces in the right places, while the afternoon slipped into the evening and the lamps were lit. I tried hard to keep up with Ned reading, he was pacing around and leaning over me shoulder, but we had to keep stopping and going back, then sometimes I just couldn't find the letter and would curse out loud, which no doubt only served to lower Mrs. Gill's opinion of me still further.

It was a gloomy tale alright, and I had only got so far as when Ned was arrested after a fight with Constable Hall, all over a horse that Wild Wright had seen fit to relieve the post master of, when we both stopped to laugh, well maybe not laugh exactly but smile at each other at the sentiment of it. He said how them coppers had tied him up like a bullock and Hall had beat him around the head, leaving a trail of blood right across the street, his blood

_which spoiled the lustre of the paint on the gate-post of the Barracks Hall._

I was taking a quick stretch when Joe comes back in, all breathless and effin this and cussing that. "I can't find the bastard, Ned, I think he's run off into the bush." Joe glanced down to the type and seeing how little we had done, put his hand on Ned's shoulder, "I am sorry, mate. I looked all over, he must be hiding like a jack rabbit in some hole." Ned seemed to be engaged in some other thoughts and Joe came to sit next to me, on the bench in front of the press. Christ, he smelled good, all fresh night air and leather.

"Made yer mind up to change out of the Blue then?" I teased.

As I said it, I swear there was a little flush in his cheeks before he grinned, "Aye well, can't say as it was me favourite look, thought ye might prefer me like I am." I never had a clue what he would say next ever, but whatever it was, it usually made me whole body melt like the snow in spring. I was about to answer, well I may have been able to speak, when he picks up me hands, me fingers all red and sore and black from the type and holds them tight, his hands cold from riding round outside and making me jump. "Ah now, let me help yer."

But he didn't turn to pick up the type like I thought, instead he pulled me hand to his mouth and pressed his lips onto the tip of every finger. How I didn't make a noise I will never know, I could feel just the touch of his tongue and it went right through me, right all the way down to me boots.

Well if I thought the typesetting was hard before, this was 20 times worse. I could feel Joe looking at me, feel his smile, and I was tingling every time his fingers brushed over mine reaching for an A or an H, imagining those fingers elsewhere, and then when he kissed me neck, Christ, I could hardly see straight never mind fit those little letters in.

"Joe, I've an idea." Ned was looking as pleased as he could in the situation, it being evident that even if I didn't have the distractions of Joe's thigh against mine, it would still take us a month of Sundays to get to the end. "We will leave this manuscript here with the lovely Mrs. Gill and sufficient funds to cover the costs of printing. I am sure that her husband will return once we have gone, no doubt called away on important business," the colour in his voice belying his words. Mrs. Gill looked none too impressed with the idea of any future dealings with the Kelly Gang, but all the same she wrote out a receipt all official like for the money and the manuscript he gave her. "We will be back, Mrs. Gill, if you would be so kind as to pass on that message to your husband."

With that we stepped out into the street and I could feel every breath I took, Joe was inches away and I am sure I was shaking, couldn't hardly look at him except out the side of me eyes. Ned dug down into his pocket and with a wink at Joe he threw a key across the space between them. "I'll do the watch…well me, Dan, and Steve." Nodding to the key, "Tarleton's living quarters up above the bank...make a change to have a bed, wouldn't you say?" A pat on me shoulder and Ned was away, headed back to The Royal Mail.

It was finally here. Jesus, I can hardly catch me breath even now, he was fingering the key and stealing a look at me. "Ah come on now, Evie," and his voice broke the spell, his arm round me waist and a grin as he leaned to kiss me, and well once he started, I dunno quite how we made it over the street and up the stairs, me legs moving of their own accord. All I could feel was his mouth and his hands, I never kissed anyone like that, almost like I was starving for lack of food and he was the only thing I could eat.

We was hardly in the door before I pulled him up against me body, well I don't know how to say it exactly, but I could feel him hard against me belly, and I am sure I cried out into his kiss. Even over the top of the cloth of me dress his hands were making me burn, and I couldn't help but press back against him, I just wanted everything right then.

I think I still had a moan on me lips when he pulled back, "You missed me then, lass," and his hands were all over the skin of me neck and me shoulders, slipping buttons through cloth so he could touch more, smiling at me.

As I recall it took me a minute to focus me eyes on his face. "You know that I did Joe, but I am done with waiting now," I was still breathing hard.

"Aye me too, Evie, could ha' taken you right there in the street," And he laughed, well and me too, it was the bloody truth and all. "But we got all night, and I've a mind to use it all up, and you know what lass, I'll still be here in the morning."

With that he took me hand and led me through the parlour, straight on past the kitchen in the corner of which stood a huge iron bath still full of water from when Joe and Ned had burst in on Mr. Tarleton taking his ablutions in the middle of the day, and on to a room off the side, well it was dark but I could see the bed. I swallowed hard, for the first time since I saw him earlier that day I was nervous, like now it came to it. Joe Byrne was gonna have me body, me, and I was gonna have his. The enormity of it all hit me on the head. He was lighting a lamp, coaxing the flames with his hands to set it to a low glow, pulling back sheets, and me just frozen to the spot.

If you watched his face close enough you could always see what he was thinking, well the first layer of it anyhow, and I watched a little line of worry flick over his eyes when he looked up at me standing there like an idjut. "Evie, are you alright?"

"I will be when you kiss me."

He smiled one of those Joe smiles that could make yer knees give way and pulled me over to the bed, creak of the springs as we both sat on the edge of it, well on the edge of many a thing I would say.

"Better come here then." His hands on me shoulders and his mouth on mine all the way down into the pillow at my back. I can't ever think of the words, apart from looking up to see his face above mine, the glow from the lamp catching his eyes and his curls, the way he was looking at me and the taste of his mouth, apart from that, even if that wasn't enough, it were something more about the earth. Well to put it plainly, like me body had decided that it wanted his, that he was the pack leader or something, and no one else would do. I could feel myself getting ready for him, I expect you know what I mean, and I know that he could sense it too, his kisses pressing into me mouth while his hands pulled up the edge of me dress, I was shivering underneath him when his fingers stroked over the skin on me thighs, me hands in his hair so I could kiss him harder.

Ah perhaps I shouldn't be telling yer all this anyhow, you can tell me if ye want me to stop, but it were part of who he was, so I will just blush while I say, pay it no mind.

"Will ye let me take this off so as I can see you, my beauty?" That's what he said when I let go for a second. I can't recall whether I answered in English, but I just shut me eyes and let him unbutton me dress, and even though he wasn't even touching me skin, the pull of each one was like another step down. Me dress off, I watched him pull at the ribbons on me shift, hardly able to keep from crying out, intent he were on each and every one of them until it was all done and about to fall open.

He slipped the cloth off me shoulders before he looked down at me, and I know I heard him catch his breath. His fingers brushed over the outline of me skin, so gentle like he was tracing a picture he had held in his mind. "I've thought about you, lass, imagined what you would feel like, the curve of yer belly, the shape of yer breasts, sometimes, lying on that hard ground in the night, I could almost feel you. But it weren't ever so soft, Christ, I never imagined you were so soft."

" Joe…" I know I said it and reached to pull his mouth to me breast, and Jesus, I thought I would just die right then, I kept glancing down to see his face and his mouth and his tongue before a swell of it all almost overtook me and I had to shut me eyes tight. What happened next I will have to take a deep breath to tell ye.

His fingers reached down over me belly, he was so gentle and slow I swear I was about to push him down with me own hand, I was almost begging him to touch me, me hips lifting up from the bed, and then he did. I heard him mutter something about Jesus and the Holy Mary, he just found out how much I wanted him I guess. His mouth left me breast to kiss me, and I could feel him losing control too, his gasps as hard as mine.

His fingers just moved slow at first and then inside me body, and Jesus, when he touched that place with his thumb too, well I thought someone might fetch the police for the noise I made, and maybe they would had there been any to fetch I suppose.

It were said that Joe knew everything about how to please a woman, and well I can't go into it all, but I thought before this night that I knew myself, Christ, I had enough practise. He made me wonder what I'd been doing all these years, how his fingers could feel better than me own. Mine could move as fast or slow or hard or soft as his were doing, but this was nothing like anything I ever felt before.

I was shaking with the touch of him, whimpering against his mouth and clinging to him tighter than I ever held anything, me hands having pulled his shirt from his breeches so as I could feel all his skin. It helped to take me mind off what he was doing to me for a second so I didn't just fall there and then, I never wanted him to stop, I swear I wanted him to promise never to stop doing it.

Not that I had a single thought in me head right then about those others I had been with, but well I suppose I expected him to move on top of me but he didn't. He was kissing all over me skin, whispering about how I was his and beautiful and how it would have been worth waiting 10 more years to see me under his hands, all soft and wet, and all the while his fingers did that and I just couldn't stop meself...Christ! I had never felt like that before, not once, and he just slowed and let me catch me breath and kissed me and smiled at me like the cat that got the cream.

I can't quite recall exactly how we got there but the next time I could think instead of just feel, we were completely naked in the lamplight, him lying between me legs so as I could feel the bone of his hips against the softness of me thighs and his cock right there, and I knew in that second that he would have it all. His hands were on me face looking right at me when he did.

Every bit of space and every breath I had he took it, took all me cries and sobs and shudders and curses and returned them all back to me, used up and grateful. He just knew how to do it, maybe he was just born like that. He knew how to press so deep that yer didn't know where you were in the world except for around him. His hands was on me hips, tipping them that way he did to make it all feel like more, smooth and gentle, and I never thought I could feel so much in one go when he just stopped moving for a second.

"Evie, my beauty, look at me."

I reached me fingers up to his mouth and for the second time that night he kissed them, closing his eyes so his lashes brushed his cheeks. And I did look at him, dark tanned muscles holding himself up and a layer of sweat on his body that was making his hair curl even more round his neck.

"Joe do it, I want you."He smiled, and oh Jesus, I tell ye think I nearly fainted when he did what I asked. Joe was so strong I think he could have pushed me into next week if he had wanted to, instead he had me sent someplace I had never been before, and well…well if all relations with men were like this it would be a wonder anyone got out of bed on a morning.

We just lied together until we were cold, waves of feelings waking me from a doze to kiss his chest or his hand, and him the same, drifting off then hugging me tight and whispering me name. And well, I won't describe the whole night for yer, but when I saw the light come through the window and he was still there next to me, his arm across me body, fast asleep and beautiful as the day I first saw him, I could hardly stop me heart from bursting.

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	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9 – Pot Black**

I can't tell ye what it was like to wake up and see Joe's face on the pillow next to mine, and I was in no hurry to wake him. I just curled meself up and laid there watching the rise of his chest and the little stirrings in his muscles, but mostly watching his face…Jesus, any lines of trouble and anger were smoothed away, and I could see that lad who jumped in the creek with Aaron Sherritt. I stretched out me hand, just hovering like one of them bright blue dragonflies over the still pond water in summer.

"I don't think they made it illegal to touch an outlaw as yet Evie," his eyes was still closed.

I couldn't help but smile. "No, I don't suppose they did. Old Queen Victoria might have a revolution on her hands if she outlawed that now, eh?"

I could see the crease of smiles around his eyes. Nothing is ever simple with Joe, well nothing ever was. "I guess you will just have to be the one leading the charge then, lass. As for the Queen, she better watch her step."

He eventually opened his dark brown eyes to look full square at me, and I thought I might just faint with the rush of blood from me head, his hand finding the back of me neck and the inches between us begging to be filled, all the while his fingers were twisting in me hair, and I could feel meself getting all breathless with wanting him. Joe took to kissing me gentle, moving closer to me so as could almost feel the heat from his skin, and then he took me hand, his mouth was hardly off mine when he says, "Like I said, there's no law against touching."

With me hand under his, he carried me fingers down over his chest, and over those hips I had felt so close, and then well, I expect I took the sort of deep breath I am taking now….Ah now, you know what it was he wanted and I did too. He was just beautiful, every bit of Joe Byrne was beautiful, smooth and precious and all I wanted and when he let go of me so as I could just touch him, I was shivering with the power of it all. He kept right on kissing me, but I got to feel what he liked by the way he pressed into me mouth when I moved me hand, and this time I didn't ever want to stop.

There was something about Joe, whatever it was he took from you, whatever you did for him, it came back a hundred times stronger. So here I was, well how to say it now- making his cock harder- ah well we all know what it's like, and yet the feel of him pressing into me hands, the look on his face, Christ I can still see it now, those eyes flashing at me and the way he would bite his lip, the sound of breathing hard, and that way he said "Oh Jesus...Evie..." well it made ME feel like I was gonna burst into flames too. I could almost feel his heartbeat fast and strong when his hand came over mine and he closed his eyes to catch his breath.

"Evie, I have to go this morning, you know that, lass. So will ye let me love yer again before I do?"

I think I swallowed the sob that came into me mouth and did me best to smile. "Anyone ever say 'No' to that Joe?"

A grin on his face, "None that springs to mind, lass, but then I've not much else on me mind but doing this..."

It was faster and more than the night before, something about it being light and the world definitely outside that door waiting to come in. Well that and he were about ready to spill all that stuff before we even did it. Makes me smile even now, I wouldn't have cared if he had in me hand- he was all I wanted.

Any how when we was all done, I don't know who was holding on tighter. Of course I knew we couldn't stay in this bed, Mr. Tarleton was sure to want his lodgings back sooner or later. But all the same I just wanted to keep Joe there beside me in the bed, like if I did then he would be safe, no more lying on the cold ground, nor coppers with undertakers, and no more wanting for a soft body to lie with. As it was, I knew as soon as we let them sheets go cold that nothing was certain.

I guess he must have been thinking the same because he pulled me all up close. "The troopers are gonna start arriving in town when they realise the wires was cut." He wiped the tears from me cheeks with his thumbs and kissed me hair. "Evie, I will come back for you, you know that I will. Lass, I'll tell you what, do you know the sound of a curlew?"

It was a rather watery shake of the head I don't doubt, but I managed to pull me thoughts up anyhow.

"Ah well, I need you listen out for this then," and he put his hands to his mouth—a 'kerloo' all soft and quiet in the morning air. "It lays little blue eggs, the night curlew, you might have seen one." He picked me chin up with his fingers, searching me face to see if I got it now, and gave that smile when I nodded me head.

"Ned and the boys, we already have a place in mind to hole up in. We plan on riding out of town in different directions, not that those coppers could follow a trail if it had arrows on it and a big sign saying 'Kelly Gang This Way', but once they hear of the bank hold up, they might have some of those black trackers with them."

He must have seen the panic in me eyes,"Ah sure now, let me worry about that. Many's the time we have had dinner at me Ma's right under their noses. Christ, we even went to the races at Mansfield!" Joe was stretched out, calm as you like, all tanned against them white sheets, the lines of his body just perfect and the cockiest grin you ever saw. "Ned was stood right in front of one of their troopers when he picked up the winnings."

I didn't want to get dressed and him to pull that door to. I knew we would never in our whole lives be back there, we would never lie in that fancy iron bed again. What I really wanted was to start yesterday over again so I could feel him touch me for the first time, but of course I couldn't, and as we stepped out into the bustle and the light of the street, all I could do was grip hard on his hand.

Mr. Cox was already behind the bar when I walked into the Royal Mail, and from the looks of the place it had been a long night there too, bottles and sleeping bodies all jumbled up over the place, two of them being Dan Kelly and Steve Hart, just starting to rouse themselves. Ned though was upright and serious, relieved to see Joe, I think he was. "We should go. We've no way of knowing how far Gill got. Them troopers could be here soon."

Joe kissed me cheek at that and whispered in me ear, "Listen out for the curlew," and then, well I just watched him be somebody else, an outlaw as well as my lover, as he walked out of the bar and off to God knows where.

The whole town was full of it all that day, conversations about who had bought Ned Kelly a drink, how Dan Kelly didn't have the evil face that the papers claimed, and how the coppers were raving mad at having been locked up in their own cells, which to be truthful, seemed to be the cause of mirth rather than anything approaching fear. Seemed there wasn't a person in town who hadn't helped them, claimed to have done, or wished they had. Charlie Naw spent a good hour boasting about how he had cut down the telegraph poles with Ned, done them proud he said. The girls in the bar were nudging me arm and asking about Joe too, saying he'd winked at them and all, which just made me smile because just maybe he had at that.

I walked around mostly with the biggest grin and me knees going weak every time I thought of him, as if every bit of my body had its own memories of Joe, well a big grin and maybe some bruises where I kicked meself for letting him ride off alone.

It were late afternoon when the troopers arrived, throwing up dust into the streets with their horses and changing the smiles to sour. There were questions and demands, Richardson even pointed me out to them, but well I guess they was used to looking down their noses at what they called one of "Byrne's whores." There were nothing I could do except keep me mouth from saying what I thought of them and tell a different truth—I really didn't know where they was headed.

The news though, which I am guessing they told us so as we would might actually show something like the respect they at least thought they deserved, made me stomach turn. Those Kelly bastards would soon be hanged, they said, on account of a Superintendent Hare fresh arrived from South Africa, wherever that was, on the invitation of the government of Victoria and New South Wales. He, so they reckoned, was gonna capture the Kelly Gang and bring them to justice. I can hear them laughing still now, "Bail up, Kelly—you'll swing anyhow!"

The troopers didn't stay long, seeing as no one seemed of a mind to talk to them. They rode off into the bush, and whilst I were glad to see the back of them, I couldn't help but wish there were more hours separating Joe, Ned, Steve, and Dan from these men who were hunting them.

By the time the bar shut that night I was fair exhausted, pulling meself up the stairs to me room and lying flat on the bed so I could think and straining to listen. Sleep did not cross me mind for a second, I didn't rightly know whether to hope he would come that night, but all the same I heard every little noise outside me window.

Truthfully I don't know how many hours later I woke with a start and freezing cold. Nothin', I could hear nothing, except the rustle of the grass and the discontented shuffling of the horses in the stable. There was no "kerloo," no Joe, and if I thought I missed him before, me whole body was aching now. It were one of many nights in those next months that I spent half asleep and half awake clutching me pillow and fearing for his life. I might have said that it would get easier, but it didn't, and I don't know if I ever had a good night sleep away from him again.

The next day I had no idea what to do with meself. I must have looked a sight and no mistake cos Mr Cox sent me back upstairs, he reckoned I was sickening for something and that no one wanted to buy a beer from a sickly looking barmaid. So I just sat in me room reading Joe's letter over and over and praying to whoever might be listening for him to come get me.

It were just dusk, that time when you can't see so well on account of yer eyes not being sure if its night or day, the sun was low in the sky, and in truth I wasn't sure what I could hear anymore, me head aching with listening. But then it came through the air, sharp and clear, and you would have thought I had slept a week from the speed at which I was off me bed and at the window. I was peering into the gloom, no chance of seeing him at all, but I was already out onto the balcony when I heard that "kerloo" again.

I was practically falling down the stairs at the back of the bar and half running into the trees, too scared to say his name in case someone heard me, when I heard hooves behind me, and before I had turned round properly, I felt Joe's hand slip under me arm. You'd have thought I was as light as a dingo pup from the way that he scooped me up and lifted me onto the saddle in front of him, the biggest smile on his face at me surprise. "Not giving yer a chance to say no this time," before he kicked his larrikin heels and we was gone.

How we never fell off that horse, only the saints could tell you. We was racing along the bank of Billabong Creek, him leaning down to kiss me face still with the reins held tight and me turning round so as he could do it all the more, I wouldn't have cared if we had fallen in the creek and drowned right then as long as he was that close to me. In between kisses and catches of breath he was telling me how they'd all met up in Wannamurra, how they'd watched the troopers sail past them, but I couldn't do anything much but grin and well, put me hands on those thighs that were tight either side of mine, flashes of the feeling of him between me legs making me head spin.

All of a sudden we took a sharp turn south and up an old cattle track I reckon it was, and it was only when we had passed over the ridge that I saw the smoke from a fire. Joe pulled the horse up a bit, I think the poor thing was breathing about as heavy as me in truth. Joe's arms was all round me and he just whispered in me ear, "I missed you lass. It'll not be as soft as old Tarleton's bed, but I reckon this bush man can make yer comfy, what do you say?"

Well maybe the growing dark or the press of his body against me back mixed up with all the years now I'd spent working in bars, I can't say what it was, but out here in the bush with the Kelly Gang, £8000 on their heads and the whole of the forces of the law out looking for them, well it didn't seem like the time to worry about what was right and proper, so I came right out with what was on me mind. "Are yer telling me, Joe Byrne, that I have to sleep under the stars with nothing but an outlaw to cover me?"  
Which made him laugh out loud, well that and push a little further in the saddle so I could feel just what me words did to him.

Jesus, I was so happy right then.

The shapes around the fire became clear as we neared the warmth of it. Ned, Steve, and Dan and another who I recognised as soon as he turned—Aaron Sherritt—were passing round a bottle or two of brandy, courtesy of Mr. Cox's hospitality, though there weren't much of a smile from Ned, like as if we'd missed the beginning of the story somehow. Aaron though was laughing like a kookaburra when he saw us. "Ah now Joe, when Ned here told me you'd gone to town to pick something up, I am sure I didn't expect you to turn up with Evie Mc Bride, and looking quite flushed already, me old bush mate. What do you say we share like we always did?" and he moved for me to sit down next to him. Aaron…well he had that way of talking like as if you could take his words either way and both would be right. He were prepared to take anything that might turn up.

In the second it took for Joe to draw breath to speak, I jumped in feet first, "If it's all the same to you, Aaron, he's fair worn me out already, so I'll pass up on that chance," with a smile on me face he could take whatever way he liked too and I opted to sit meself down next to Steve instead. It may have been the light, but I thought I saw Ned's shoulders shake a little and Joe, well he just grinned into the brandy bottle.   
Anyhow it seemed like Aaron and me had heard the same news, and he returned to telling Ned about Superintendent Hare, how Hare was gonna be organising the search and all.

"Ah sure we've nothing to worry about, Ned." Steve all flushed with brandy and always with that confidence he had that nothing was ever gonna go wrong. "They've tried all sorts of things to catch us. Not one of our mates has taken the reward, the biggest one ever offered mind, and there's plenty who could do with the money."

"They'll never fuckin' catch us, Ned." Dan was laughing now, his eyes watering as his mind cast back. "Remember that plan they had to trap us with them coppers pretending to be horse thieves? Aye and that was something they didn't rightly need to pretend at neither!"

Steve was chuckling too, "And those coppers dressed up as priests—detectives my arse, they couldn't detect a wombat from a wallaby—supposed to be offering to hear confession, we would have sooner been convinced by the devil himself!" Dan was near to rolling around.

"Ah no, but you're forgetting the best one now, those women on horses." Steve barely able to get the words out for laughing. "Listen to this, Evie. We was in Avenal when this whole troop of the prettiest women we ever saw comes riding in, well they was police spies but all the same the Royal Melbourne dressage champion, don't yer know, takes such a liking to Joe she stretches herself out on the green baize of the billiard table for him…"

Well I suppose he must have seen something in me eyes, maybe even the reflection of Joe in them staring at him with a look that could stop anything in its tracks—"snake eyes" some of the papers called him—and I think Steve suddenly got sober again. In the moment it took for me to look at his face and study the mixture of sorry and "Christ, will you let the earth open up right now, Joe is gonna kill me for sure," I could hear the shuffle of feet and Ned clearing his throat, but most of all I could hear Joe breathing.

I could feel it starting in me belly, travelling up to me chest and into me throat, the biggest choke of laughter I ever had, and I don't think Steve could believe his eyes, like as if he'd been cut down from the hangman's noose at the last moment. I couldn't stop laughing, Christ I still can't! I think I managed to splutter something about how she must have had known which side of the bread had butter on it, and the next thing I knew I was in Joe's lap, him holding so tight to me I thought I might stop breathing.

It were a wonder all the coppers in New South Wales didn't hear us laughing and talking all the night, ah listen to me now, 'us' like I joined the Kelly Gang. Well just maybe I would have if anyone had asked.

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	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10 – Piece of My Heart**

I can't say as I had ever slept outside before, though I suppose the way that the wind comes through the cracks in the walls back home I might as well have, but anyways there I was waking up in the arms of an outlaw, and besides an ache in me hip from the hardness of the ground, I was smiling before I even opened me eyes. His shoulder the best pillow I had ever had, his body the best cover, and it felt like the land was all around me. Cold wind and hard ground and a sky so big it could drown you in blue.

Aaron was already heating a pan of water to brew some tea that he got from the Chinese fellas, though I could hear Steve and Dan saying as how there weren't gonna touch that stuff, they didn't want to end up all glassy eyed and slow. Aaron said they was daft buggers and already slow as it was, which made Joe laugh and roll onto his back. "Will yer bring some over here, mate?"

"Lost the use of yer legs, have ye?" But Aaron was smiling all the same, leaning over us to hand him a cup, "but not the use of your cock though, by the looks of her."

I can't quite describe it, and for all the fact that it had nothing to do with Ned, I noticed him from the corner of my eye pulling his jacket tighter as Aaron said it, like the wind just blew through the grass bringing a chill with it, and for the first time I saw just the edge of something else that until then I hadn't even guessed at. Well anyhow Joe made light of it, told Aaron to eff off, and drank his tea but there was more between these men that I would only find out about later.

Plans was being made while we sort of woke up to ride south and distribute some of that money that the bank of New South Wales had kindly donated to the needy and mostly deserving poor. Ned was anxious to engage the services of a lawyer to plead his mother's case, and well I wasn't sure where it came from neither except from that rustle of the grass, but Joe were ranting on about how Ned was a fool to trust these people, had he not learnt that from that bastard Cameron, who were someone in the government supposed to be looking into their grievances and who now was struck dumb as a possum in a pie.

"You need to know who your friends are, ain't that right Joe?" Aaron was speaking quieter than I had ever heard him, and the hand that I was holding went rigid all of a sudden.

"Come on Evie, you need to get back to Jerilderie." He never answered Aaron, he ripped everything out of you, standing there, his brows tangled together and his face hard as stone. All I wanted was to be able to make him smile.

There were quick arrangements as to where they was to meet later, and Joe was saddling up the horse while I watched the faces of those men that just the night before had been all aglow in the fire, the morning light showed up more and that's the truth. Ah well maybe it was just another side to them, I had seen what they could have been and now I was looking at what they was—cold, hungry and been away from home too long. Trouble was that there weren't no place in the towns they could stay now. The countryside was theirs, all of them being experienced bushmen, but now you could feel the winter was coming on fast.

The further we got from the camp I could feel his hard edges grow softer behind me, his body curving round mine as we rode in silence back to Jerilderie. I tell ye I put it out of me mind as quickly as I could that he was gonna leave me again, because whatever else was waiting round the corner, he was there now, and instead of thinking about me cold bed once he'd gone, I made meself feel his thighs round mine and his chest against me back and the brush of his chin against me neck, willing me body and me soul to remember what it felt like to be tight as I could next to Joe Byrne. I think I got what it meant to be his.

He weren't asking for tears, though him and I both knew there would be bucket loads. He was asking for Evie Mc Bride to be herself and at the same time be his, not because she was weak but quite the opposite, and whatever else those bastards were gonna do to the Kelly Gang, I resolved there and then that's what I could do. So when he stopped the horse, I turned round as best as I could and kissed him hard so as he would remember it and keep him warm. I slipped down from that saddle and reached me hand up to hold his.

"I will be back, Evie."

"I know that ye will," and I watched him kick that horse into running before I let tears run down me face.

I was still wiping the back of me hand across me face when I walked into the Royal Mail. "And what do you think you are doing here?" Mrs. Cox had her hands on her hips behind the bar. At first I looked around to see if she was talking to me.

"It's 12, Mrs. Cox, I am here to work me shift."

I was half out of me coat before she caught my arm, none too gently I might add. "I don't think so, Evie McBride. Skipping work on the pretence of being ill and then stopping out all night." That was it, I was sacked, and in the next half hour I was sat on the step of the Royal Mail, a small bundle next to me and no place to go, no job, no money, and no Joe. I sat there for a good while without thinking at all before the cold air made me shudder. The Woolpack. I decided to go to the Woolpack.

They had no jobs going, but Mary Jordan who ran the place, well maybe that was a bit of an overstatement of the facts, she let it run itself more or less with the result that it was the roughest bar in town, well Mary said as I could share me mate Rosie's room while I looked for work. At least at the Woolpack I had something like friends, the Kelly's had some sympathisers amongst Mary and her regulars.

The next two weeks I just about did enough to feed meself, no chance of sending any home and I didn't want to worry them anyways so I just kept me peace, a few hours here and there at the laundry, some work I never got paid for in the big house, but at least it were warm and I stuffed me face with bread. The promise of more work always held out as a string, to keep yer begging them for favours, I toed the line, but well I had no choice.

Everyday I tried to get sight of a newspaper see if they had printed Ned's letter, but there was nothing, no reference to it at all. All I saw was coppers coming and going to the Gill's place and a big empty space where the people of Australia should have heard the true story of the Kelly Gang.

The nights after Rosie had finished working we spent under as many clothes and covers as we could find, on account of the weather creeping in under the window frame and round the door, talking and telling tales, laughing and making each other blush, so by the end of it Rosie knew about as much as I did about Joe and the Kelly's, and I swear she was the one who heard him.

"What did yer say that bird was Evie? A curlew was it now?" My nod made her smile.  
"Well now there is either a whole flock of them or an outlaw outside this window for sure."

What I saw when I climbed out the window onto the balcony took me by surprise even more. Joe and Ned were both at the back of the Woolpack, still on horseback and with the sort of looks that would wither even an acacia tree.

He didn't even get off his horse. "I can't stay Evie lass. That bastard Gill, he didn't print the letter, he gave it to the coppers. I hope its gone to Hare himself, but no other bugger will get to read it now," he could hardly speak for the clench in his jaw. Joe were mad, I had never seen his eyes so dark and angry. The horse he rode was just as impatient to go throw itself into something other than more talking, like as if they were part of each other, it were stamping the ground, hot breath out of its nostrils, and the glint of cold moonlight on its back.

There was no raised voices but you could feel it burning between Joe and Ned. Holy Mary, I never heard or seen him so full of everything that had ever been done to himself and all of our kind. Every single deportation, kicking from the coppers, unlawful imprisonment, and snot-nosed hungry kid was all there in Joe's voice and his eyes, and it weren't anything about acceptance.

"You should ha just let me shoot the fucker, Ned. Christ…will yer not listen to me now?" His horse whinnied as its hooves trampled the grass, "We will never get justice from them. The bastards will hang us or shoot us down before they listen to us." His hand was running over that Winchester, and his jaw hard as he looked up at the sky. 

Ned's eyes were about as wild as Joe's, a start on his lips though about how he would make them see sense that was swallowed up in the space between them. I took one look back at the pub where Rosie was looking out of the window before I ran to the horse, me hand reaching to hold the reins. Sometimes you get to those places where the road forks and this was mine.

"Joe take me with you...fer Christ's sake just take me with you. I've no job, no money, no lodgings, but I can help." In truth I had no idea what I could do to help apart from keeping him warm, but that would do for now.

Joe frowned and looked at me, almost like he remembered that he could. "Are yer sure Evie? You know where we are headed, lass." And he didn't mean Greta, that much I knew.

"That's why I need to come."

He might have had a smile at the side of his mouth, I wasn't certain, but he looked round at Ned who shrugged, still caught in his own thoughts.

"Well, unless she wants to be joining us on the scaffold, we better get a move on."

One advantage of having nothing is that it doesn't take long to pack. I gathered the few things I had and kissed Rosie goodbye before I slipped out into the dark. Joe grabbed me hand and I was up on that impatient horse and into the night without a glance backwards.

We just rode fast across the bush, and I shivered against the cold cloth of his jacket. He felt like the night, hard and frost and kind of sharp, well that was until me hands found the skin of his belly underneath all those layers. I always loved that, his skin, and I smiled into his back for him shifting in the saddle and squeezing me leg.

But it were a long hard night, the crossing of the swollen Murray River proving more dangerous than my horse skills were up to, and I was glad to just hold on tight to him. It must have been hours later, hours where we had stopped and started to let the horses rest and drink, before we arrived. Well at first I didn't know we was anywhere particular, it were another stop and another cave and I was so tired I didn't ask, but Joe slid from the horse and kissed me. "I won't be long Evie, Ned'll look after ye."

I never even got the chance to answer before he was gone, hardly a sound of his feet while I peered into the gloom to a shack down below near the creek. "You may as well make yerself comfortable," Ned smiled at me while he tied the horses to the trunk of a tree, his eyes looking at once all over the landscape. 

"What are we doing here?" He stopped what he was doing and looked at me, maybe the first time he ever did properly, a flash of seeing what I was, and that was me wondering what the hell I was doing in the middle of the night with a man the whole of the constabulary was looking for, while me lover, if that was what he was, I weren't none too sure right then, had left me to go someplace else. I have to admit I was wondering what I had gone and left that warm bed in Jerilderie for.

"Do you not know Evie? Joe needs some of that stuff he smokes from Aaron, that's where he's gone, down to Sherritt's selection in the creek." I could almost hear the sigh in Ned's voice, "We've been riding a few days up to Jerilderie and back. He is a mighty force when he is himself, lass, Joe Byrne can do anything, Christ, I hope he can, but well…you get to know the signs that he is missing it, and THAT's why we are here shivering our arses off while he visits Aaron."

He said it like I would understand, and I frowned I think because I was beginning to. We sat there a while, no fire in case the traps were watching the place, but if they was, Ned said they sounded like buffalo coming over the bush, he'd read about them buffalo in a book about America, and we'd be long gone before they got near to us anyways. Ned, well he had a voice that you couldn't help but listen to, deep and soft all at the same time, he just sat down and closed his eyes and talked, and if there had been a fire to warm us, I might have believed I was home and listening to me Da.

I don't know why exactly Ned told me, maybe he was lonely too, but I heard about his Da, how he died broken and puffed up with disease and how his Ma found what comforts she could with men who might have loved her but who moved on and left her with just more children. And he told me about Joe, how he needn't have even been one of the Kelly Gang, how he could of left and the coppers would have been none the wiser.

"Joe would stand between me and a bullet, ah I think he has, at least one that wasn't fired yet, thank Christ, so I let him be, Evie. He needs that stuff from the Chinese fellas… I even put up with Aaron…" he smiled like a conspirator, and well I never felt so proud, he were a good man Ned Kelly.

Only God knows how long we was talking, but we both kept looking down at the creek all the same, a jump of Ned's muscles before he stood up sudden, "He has been too long. It will be light soon enough."

We didn't speak anymore, instead moving down the hillside and into the mud at the bottom as the ground levelled out. Ned had his finger on his lips for me to stand still while he cocked his gun next to the door. I was hardly breathing to tell the truth, all things in me head about it being a trap and Joe already in it.

What I saw when Ned kicked open the door made me sway. Christ, I was wide-eyed, scared, and angry all at the same time! The pair of them were flat out on the bed next to the wall and a sweet smell of something I didn't know in the air, and well thank God we weren't the coppers because they was about 3 minutes too slow in reaching for their guns. It were the naked girl lying next to Aaron letting out a scream that woke them up, and even then I wasn't sure if they could actually see our faces.

"Joe..."

He had a half-asleep smile as he sat up rubbing his eyes, all wayward dark curls and hands not quite doing what he wanted them to do yet. I just stood there staring, finally I understood, and I was right balanced someplace between hitting him for leaving me and holding him for being alright, when I heard Ned behind me cursing, "Christ, who is this now? She can be only 13, Aaron."

Aaron to be truthful was a little slow in covering himself, maybe he wanted me to see him or maybe he thought Ned wasn't gonna shoot him naked, either way he sighed out loud, "Since when did we make you Governor of the state of Victoria, Ned? Deciding who a man can lie with? Her name is nuttin' to do with you, and anyways I'm not superstitious..." He was smiling now, that way that he did, and Ned shook his head before he turned to Joe.

"You will get yerself killed, Joe." Well that hung there in the smoke awhile I can tell you, and I could almost see Joe's thoughts running around his head, Ned put his hand out to touch him before he changed his mind. There weren't nothing they could do that wasn't gonna get them killed.

"Aye well, let's hope I take some of them with me when I do then." Joe weren't smiling, just wrapping some brown stuff in a cloth to slip into his pocket before we stepped out of the door and into the first light as we made our way back up to the horses.

He hadn't rightly looked at me back at Aaron's, but then there were dark eyes searching me face for anything to cling on to, the cold air had him awake and sharp again. "Jesus, I am sorry," he just closed those eyes for a second, "I shouldn't have left you for so long. Come with me to Ned's, let me get you warm and something to eat, and then I will take you to yer Da's, if that's what you want." He reached to me face and it were the first time we had touched for what seemed like hours, and I felt me eyes filling up with it all, his hand was on me cheek, his thumb pulling at me lips, "Ah Christ, Evie..."

With me deep between his legs on the saddle and his face set hard against the wind, he scouted the route through the trees and gullies to where the Kelly's selection stood in Greta. Once we could see it, the danger of it all came washing over me.

"Joe won't the coppers be there waiting for us?" I was tired and shivering and me nerves was all raw.

I think he felt another question in me voice rather than the words, and I felt his arms tighten round me before he spoke, just gentle, "Look at the washing on the line, Evie." I was frowning I have no doubt but looked all the same, from where we were stood I could make out a line of underskirts and such like waving stiff in the wind.

Me confused look made him smile, and Ned too. "It's a message from Kate. When the clothes are the right ways up it means the traps are long gone. Tom Lloyd and the boys keep a close eye on the comings and goings of the Victoria Police."

What Kate made of me right then I don't know, but she gave me, Joe, and Ned a bowl of hot oats and thinned milk, and it tasted like the best thing I ever ate. I was almost too tired to speak, and once we was done I just sat there looking at Joe across the table, his eyes straight back at me before he turned to ask Ned something I couldn't quite hear, the question obvious when he took me hand and led me to the room out the back.

There were nowhere to sit but on the thin bed, and so we did. He was just aching, I could see it, and I wanted to take it all away, but I lifted me head and waited for him.

"Will yer hear me out before yer decide, Evie? What do you want to do?"

I am not sure how I managed to speak. "I want it to be alright Joe, I want to stay with you and it to be alright."

He was just staring at me, him trying to say things he thought I might want to hear, but he just couldn't, whatever else he did, Joe never lied to me. His hands, which usually seemed so sure of themselves, waited for me, to see if I moved away before they held me face like they was holding one of those tiny eggs, scared it would break and full of something like wonder, and I felt meself shaking while he kissed me mouth, just gentle. Jesus, I loved him and there is nothing I wouldn't have done for us to be happy.

"We will never be 'alright' Evie, not me and you, we will be a thousand times more than alright or nothing at all. I am an idjut for leaving ye, maybe for smoking that stuff too, but I need you to understand, even if you are gonna leave."

I couldn't stand it, I just couldn't, and I reached me hand to brush over his, but he didn't stop. "You know me Evie, a bit more now than you did when you asked to come with me this morning I grant you, but you aren't running out the door, so I am guessing it's enough, for a little while anyhow. Lass, I wish I could always feel like I do now, right now I know everything there is about me and you, and despite the fact that the coppers might arrive any time, and, Christ, I might not see this winter out, it never felt clearer, safer, nor just how it should be, not since I didn't know any better anyhow."

His hands were on my shoulders now, just picking out curls of me hair to twist in his fingers. "Before me Da died, you know when I was a lad, and me and Aaron just spent days at the creek, ah sure we was supposed to be at school, but I already knew me words, it felt like nothing was ever going to go wrong, like it was the happiest a body could ever be, but aye I didn't know any better."

I couldn't hardly stop meself crying by then, "Joe, please don't…you don't have to answer to me...I don't care about the opium, smoke it all day if you want to. Please...I just want you, I just want you to smile."

"Ah see, you got there before me Lass, that's what I am trying to tell ye…" his fingers just stroked over me cheeks to catch the salt water.

"Yer know, I think its like what they go on about at church about never being good enough," he looked right at me and I just sobbed, it was almost too much to see him, "and we were always the worst an all," a small smile on his lips. "Well anyhow, I got it that you don't care about all that, that how I am is what you want, no other woman ever did, not really. Not even me Ma. Some of them seem to like me well enough despite it all, some of them even say that they love me, and perhaps they do, but you Evie, you see it all, take it all on yer shoulders and still come with me, because it is who you are too. And that's why I need you."

Jesus. Well, will ye give me a minute…

Joe Byrne had it all in his head, knew almost everything there was about life and sex, and grabbed them both with two hands, like they was the same. And maybe they are, because when he laid me down then and loved me, soft and gentle like he just wanted me to feel everything he thought as well as to hear it, I swear I never breathed the same air again.

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	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11 – Ain't Never Gonna Love You Any Better, Babe**

It weren't safe for Ned and Joe to stay at the selection for any amount of time, so what they had in mind was an old shepherd's hut up in the ranges behind, and with the weather turning bad, there wasn't a fool, never mind a copper, who would be venturing up there if he didn't have to. They could last there the whole winter if necessary, as long as they got supplies, and I was shaking my head with wonder as Kate explained how the Kelly Gang's supporters seemed to have the whole thing wrapped up—food, places to hide out, and of course, there was Aaron and his opium. The Chinese community, apart from being very fond of their adopted son "Ah Joe," had no allegiance to the coppers neither, and she said how they would insist on providing bits of food without taking the cost of it. Of course Ned had been careful all along about looking after his own, making sure debts were paid off, losses covered when fields were left rotting due to one of our sort being arrested and all, and well I guess the fact that no one had yet claimed the reward, now up to £8000, don't yer know, spoke for something.

I recall sitting back in me chair right there and then wondering how it would all end. It were like one of those battles I read about in America, in their war between the states I think it were, where one army set up on one side of the Rappahannock River in someplace called Virginia, and the other army on the opposite shore. And there they stayed, sometimes a big fight with hundreds dead, and sometimes one side trying to cross, but most of all just sitting there, looking and waiting for something to happen. Not that I were anxious for anything to happen, I don't mind saying, seemed to me I had quite enough where that was concerned, but all the same, nothing could be normal. Ned and his brother Dan couldn't run stock, and Joe couldn't…well Joe couldn't do whatever it was that he did, which seemed to me was a bit of everything as long as he didn't have to stay in one place at a time. Ah well, I am smiling now, maybe that's why he was here after all.

Anyways, what I needed to do was go visit me family and get a job—there weren't gonna be anyone giving me free food and that was for sure—well those two things and one other…

Me Da, well, it had been a long time, and it was all there for me to see, despite him making a play of getting up and greeting me, his legs wouldn't make it down over the Ovens River anymore, that's for sure. Seems Michael and Jimmy had taken to carrying him about in the cart when he wanted yet more to drink. I stayed the whole afternoon telling them all about the job in the Royal Mail and all.

"Eighteen hours a day, lass? Ah now you should get on to them union fellas. I hear they are kicking up a storm in Melbourne and Sydney." And he went on to tell me it all, some I had heard already a thousand times about the Tolpuddle Martyrs, or so they was called, deported from England for organising a union, and some new about the gatherings he had heard about in the docks and on the larger farms and about the iron workers strikes too. He moved more then than I had seen him do in the last few hours, whiskey and bad legs conspiring against him, but nonetheless it made me smile, it was good to see him.

Mary was out courting, me Ma said, a "nice young man from Wangaratta," which wasn't without its barb, and I couldn't believe the size of Sean," looking more like Jimmy every day and twice as cheeky," Da said with a smile. Me Ma, well she was a bit on edge, expecting the coppers to turn up any minute, I don't doubt, and concerned about her reputation. Ah now, maybe I am being unfair to her, what she did was feed me and send me on me way, and in truth that was all she could do.

The next day I walked into Beechworth having kissed Joe goodbye, something I would like to think I got used to, but all the same this weren't no "see you for dinner tonight" kiss, I never actually knew for certain when or, well God help me, IF I would see him again. Anyhow walking down the high street it came back, all that had happened—the sight of him across the road that spring morning with the sun on his curls, the smoky taste of his kiss down in that cellar, and Jesus, how I had watched him make love to Maggie in her room. And now I knew what it felt like, I swear I flushed pink there and then as me body remembered what his fingers and his body felt like heavy on top of me that very morning.

Well, I must have walked past the Commercial twenty times before I plucked up the courage to walk in, arguments with meself about how it was all best left and how she wouldn't want to see me anyhow, so what was the point, and all rubbing up against tears in me eyes for what we had, how she helped me be who I was. I had no idea if she knew about me and Joe, what I did know was that as soon as she saw me, she would. So I didn't have "Had Relations With Joseph Byrne" tattooed on me head, but well, I never was any good at pretending, and anyhow I came to thinking that having him changed you somehow, and she would know because she had too.

Anyhow, eventually I pulled me shawl round me and stepped through the door, it were more like going home than home, and I took a big breath of that air before me eyes searched around for familiar faces, hoping none of them with big bushy beards. Tom O'Leary spotted me first, bellowing, "Well now, Evie McBride, to what will we be owing this pleasure?" We talked minutes on how me Da was, hadn't been in for a week or two, and how had I been and all that. Some of the old fellas me Da knew smiling at me, and Maggie, well she stayed polishing a glass, but looking at me and waiting for me to go to her.

Christ it was good to see her, whatever else I felt right then about what I had to say and what she might do, it was good to see her. "Will I see if Tom will let me help yer out tonight, Maggie, be like old times and all?"

We just looked at each other for what might have been an hour, sure Tom would have shouted if it had been, before she nodded. "Will I see if you can stay, Evie? Be like old times?…Except Joe isn't coming by tonight."

Jesus, well, I didn't think it was going to be easy, and it wasn't. I closed me eyes to stop myself doing or saying anything else right then, but she put her hand on my shoulder. "I would like yer to stay, Evie."

I was glad to be working with her again, and it gave us a chance to catch up on all the other things, though me Da had very nearly been a fixture in the Commercial as much as the wooden tables, and it seemed that about everyone knew me business as well as I did. Maggie, well she told me that she'd been worried half to death when I'd had to leave Beechworth, all about the raids that had been going on more recent since that Hare had taken charge of the hunt for the Kelly Gang, how they was watching Joe's mothers selection and Aaron's place too. Before we knew it, Tom were stretching up to push the bolt across the door, and the place was quiet.

Sitting on the edge of Maggie's bed, I watched her pull the curtains, such as they were, over the window and waited 'til she sat down next to me. I was about to speak, tell her everything and pray she wouldn't throw me out, when Maggie turned to face me. "Joe told me, Evie, he told me that you and him...had been together."

I don't think I was quite breathing, searching her face for what she was going to say next and what came was a sting from a scorpion I didn't know was in the room with us. "He told me when he stayed here a week or so ago."

Well it bloody hurt, I can tell yer, there I was expecting to turn up and confess it all and hope she could forgive me, and now instead, I was sitting with my mouth open, feeling all that same rush of pain and anger and despair and jealousy that I am sure she had felt, only she had walked with it for many more years. This wasn't just "another woman," but Maggie and Evie, us, and sitting so close we could hit or hug each other.

"Jesus, last week? Maggie…" she could see me starting to fall.

"I know, Evie, I know. I knew that would hurt yer, I am sorry. I am sorry for meself too, but I thought ye needed to know, not that he comes much, to tell the truth, what with the coppers and all. Anyways, well, I have helped out some, yer know, passing on some money and all that…."

To be honest with you, her voice was sort of drifting past me ears, because he was in me head, and the force of it just hit me like one of them steam trains. Floods of tears there were, I thought I would never be able to stop, and Maggie took a deep breath and put her arms round me, "Ah will ye come on, Evie. That's just Joe…but I can't keep waiting for him, well now there never was much point in that anyways…." 

It was that single thing that made me lift me head and wipe me hands over my face. He were never "just Joe," and it was never about me waiting. It were all about choices and freedom, his freedom and mine. He chose to stick with Ned whatever the consequences, he chose opium and women and to go wherever he pleased, and he chose me. No pretence and no excuses. The last few weeks just fell into place, he was laying it out bare for me. I was free to chose too, and I chose him completely and utterly and right there and then. No more deliberating and no more wondering if it were the right thing to do, I chose him come Hell or high water, and I had no doubt we would have plenty of both.

Me and Maggie talked 'til the birds started their chorus, leaning back against the wall, all covered up like we always had done before. But it wasn't the same, I would have been an idjut to think it would be. There was still hurt and things dragged out into the air that wasn't ready to heal yet, but we were there and that was enough. Whether I could explain it or not, whether she understood it all or not, the penny had really dropped, and in truth I felt sorry a bit that Maggie, for as much as she loved him, she couldn't take that step. But she had cleared the final path for me to take mine, and I couldn't wait to run back to him.

Things conspired to stop me for a couple of days. First I had to get work, which I did in the telegraph office on account of the fact I could read and write, and then I found myself a room in town. Ah, I know I could have stayed at me Ma's, but well, this way I could come and go as I pleased. I would beg or borrow a horse to ride up and see him, and sometimes he would arrive late at night out the back and we would lie in that thin bed, his long legs all tangled up with mine, Christ I'd be surprised if the Queen herself couldn't see me grin all the way over in England. 

We even had tea with his mother in Sebastopol one night, right under the noses of the coppers and all. And if you forgot for a moment that the whole of the South Wales and Victoria constabulary was out to hang him, not to mention the Times and all the newspapers calling him a murderer and scum, if you forgot all that and that anyone could shoot him on sight and be clapped on the back for performing a public service since he was officially an outlaw, then well, we were happy.

Sometimes I didn't see him for weeks on account of the snow, it were a vicious winter that year, and the Wombat ranges were a challenge to folk in the best of times, but Christ, we made up for it when we did. He loved me hard and gentle over and over, and we rode fast as we could over the land those squatters thought they owned but in fact belonged to the birds and the lizards, the warthogs and the roos, and to us, it belonged to us. Joe said it were like that in America, said it were open and free, well for Irish fellas anyhow, and that one of these days he'd convince Ned that it was either get on a boat or be done for. Of course he knew it weren't gonna happen, but that didn't stop us dreaming.

Sometimes we sat for hours talking about ranches in the Wild West, as they called it, like we was in a position to go buy one, ah I am smiling. We used to pretend like as we was hot shots instead of "selector scum," how we would dress up all fine and hand over bags full of paper money for a big wooden house, with stairs, I wanted stairs. We would talk about any little facts we could remember from newspapers we had seen, the papers from England were full of the Zulu Wars, as they were named, in Africa where the British redcoats had been defeated in battles with black men with spears and knives, which Joe said was no bad thing, but nonetheless we went over and over each detail like they were jewels to be examined with a glass. Joe had read books too, and I could sit there with his legs and his arms all round me with me head on his chest letting him paint all those pictures with that soft voice of his. I don't suppose that God would have ever considered Joe and me right and proper, but this was the only honeymoon I was ever gonna get. Ah white was never my colour anyhow.

It were a dark rainy night when I arrived at the shack, late October I think it were, armed with some bread I'd bought for them to have for supper, though what good the soggy mass was gonna do I can't imagine, when what I saw sent me blood running cold through me heart.

I had never seen Joe like that, white and shaking. He was always lean, but he looked like he'd not eaten in days. He were just laying on what passed for a bed, the blankets up to his chin, a groan as I sat on the bed like he was in pain. "Jesus…what's the matter, Joe?"

When he didn't answer, well I wasn't rightly sure he had heard, I looked round at Ned, thinking there must be something wrong with them three to be sitting there messing about with their business of smoking and playing cards while he was looking so sick.

Steve shrugged his shoulders 'He's out of that brown stuff, lost some as we crossed the King's River. It's been about 3 days now, and Tom Lloyd says the coppers are watching Aaron, so…well, he'll be over it soon."

My face flushed with anger as it was dawning on me that Joe was in a dark hole of his own making. I pulled me hand out of his and turned on Steve. "You are not gonna leave him like this? How long will it last? Jesus, what if the cops come here? How is he gonna get out?" It were like a gathering snowball in me mind.

Ned eventually looked at me for a second before returning to his cards, his jaw was set hard. "There's nothing to be done about it. I have seen him worse."

Well I doubt they'd ever seen me so mad, slamming my hands down on the table. "Ned, you told me yerself, 'Joe can do anything' you said. Well, he can't bloody do it like this! Jesus, he couldn't even ride a horse to get out of here, never mind fire that Winchester to cover your backs. YOU need him and, even if I wish it were different, he needs that stuff right now, so well…why can't one of you get him some?"

Their faces was all looking at me, Ned was standing now, and I was shaking almost as much as Joe. "And what do you propose we do, Evie? Knock up ol' Paddy Allen in his shop in Beechworth and buy some, easy as you please? Did you not hear, girl? The coppers are watching Aaron's place, the ranges are crawling with the bastards. Is it not enough he has put us all in danger? Because yes, you are right, lass, I do need him and his Winchester, and his mind, God help me, when he isn't dragged out over the rack like this. But now you are asking me now to go ride into a place where I know for a fact they are waiting for me?"

I couldn't quite answer him, so I just met his eyes. Ned Kelly and Evie McBride, well I don't suppose you had two people who cared about Joe more. "Alright, I will go then." I must have just thrown the soggy bread, because the cards went everywhere, frustration all bubbling up, and then I saw Joe go to stand up, only he couldn't quite, more of a stagger than a step towards me.

"Evie, ye can't."

"I bloody well can. Christ, Joe, it's not enough that every copper in 3 counties wants to kill you, that you intend to make it easy for them?" And I with that, I pulled me shawl over me head, stepped out into the freezing rain, and started off down the mud that passed for a track a good few miles to Aaron's selection.

Once I was on the flat again, I mounted the horse and made some progress, but it were a fearful night, and I must have looked like a drowned rat by the time I started to slide down the bank to the shack. With a look up at the hills, I saw the caves lit up like beacons, and I shook me head, did they really think they would catch the Kelly Gang like that? Just a turn of me stomach reminded me that an hour or so ago I was asking Ned to come here hisself.

I banged on the door with me fist until it swung open, and Aaron of course in nothing but a union suit. "Christ, Aaron, are ye never dressed?"

He stood back in the doorway and grinned, stretching his arm up over the frame while he looked at me. "Never know who might come by, and look who did. Well now, Evie McBride, can't say as you look yer best, but I knew you'd be calling on me in the end. Come in, why don't yer. Maybe's you can dry off some of them clothes by the fire."

I was barely in the door before he shut it behind me, his hands already on me shoulder, but I were in no mood for his games. "Aaron, I have come for Joe. He needs that stuff you smoke."

Aaron's brow creased a bit for a second. "Aye, well he has quite an appetite for it, well and for a pretty lass too, one of the many things we share."

But me eyes were filling up. "Aaron, he is a mess, he can't hardly stand, Steve says he lost it in the water, and the traps…they are everywhere. Will ye just give me some for him, please? Ah Christ, I know what it might do to him," well I couldn't quite breathe "but them coppers are aiming to kill him first."

Aaron stopped short. "Does Ned know you are here?" His face was changed and with something like gentle he helped me out of me wet coat to put it steaming by the fire with my shawl. Well I told him the whole story while he poured me a shot of whiskey and rooted around in a box, a familiar block of brown being cut and wrapped. I dunno why to tell the truth, maybes I just needed to tell someone to get it straight in me own head exactly what I was doing there, and if anyone was going to understand it was Aaron.

"Evie…" his face screwed up like as if he couldn't decide whether to say it or not, "can yer not convince him to take yer some place, Sydney…anywhere?"

I looked at him like he had just said the Queen was a Chinese woman. "Jesus, Aaron, he won't leave Ned to fight those bastards alone, you know that."

"Well maybe he should, Evie, it isn't his fight. I told him that, told Joe that me and him would be alright whatever they did, whoever was the governor of Victoria, we could bend in the wind, blow over this colony picking up lasses as we go." I frowned at him and he knew it wasn't funny either and looked right back at me as he passed me the still soggy coat from the back of the chair. "He seems determined to get himself killed, and that's for sure. I guess it's up to us to try and stop him, wouldn't you say? Anyhow this will do for now," and he pressed the small package into my hand.

"You are wrong, Aaron, it is his fight, and mine too and yours. It isn't just about Ned's mother and them bloody horses, you must know that." I was struggling to push my arms through the wet sleeves of my coat as Aaron took a deep breath.

"Well, I will leave the revolution to you and Ned, Evie. It's Joe I am worried for."

I would have stayed and argued with him, God knows all those years of listening to me Da had to be worth something, but me mind was on Joe. "Go, lass, he will be worse," like he read me thoughts.

"The coppers will have seen me come here, Aaron, they are up on the hill."

"Aye, I know they are, made them tea once or twice just so they knew that I did, but they'll think you're another of me women." He couldn't resist a grin then, it were just who he was, "Look after him, Evie."

home next


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12 - Hey Joe**

"Will yer look at this, lass!" me Da was laughing hard and spluttering the words out as I stood at the table, ladling the thin soup into bowls. Wiping a tear from his eyes he proceeded to read from The Ovens and Murray Advertiser an article under the headline of "Outlaw Hunting in Victoria." I can't remember now the exact words of it, you will have to forgive me, but it were a joke article, a satire so it's called, on the coppers' inability to catch the Kelly Gang.

_By sticking to his plan, Captain Standish is confident of capturing the outlaws before they die of old age._

Well me Da was nearly doubled over as he read aloud about how the coppers had taken a number of lunar observations with a view to obtaining the exact position of the gang and it were found that

_Ned and Dan Kelly were concealed exactly at the lines of circumvallation, while Hart was standing on a rock three points to the northward, and Byrne was smoking a cigar eight points to the south._

Even me Ma were laughing, and I suppose we all hoped it were true that the coppers really were as useless as they seemed. The truth was that the searches were increasing now that the winter was over, with black trackers being called in to follow the trails. The traps had watches on Joe's mother's house, well that was a bit of a standing joke, she knew they were there since she found old tin cans that glinted in the sun leftover from their none-too-disguised camps, but they were hassling and worrying the people who were the gang's eyes and ear like flies around horses. Sympathisers were being denied selections and arrested without ever then being charged. Nevertheless, all the while Ned's popularity grew, there was even a nickname for us - the Greta Mob, so me Da told me. Christ, I even heard some songs being sung in the Commercial one night, like them old Irish ballads of heroes and times gone past, telling stories about how brave they were and how God was on their side. Well I don't know about that, but it made me smile all the same.

It was also in the Commercial that I heard something from Maggie that was less heartening. "Rumour has it that Aaron is talking to the coppers, Evie. Will yer see Joe?" There weren't nothing specific in what she said, just that she had heard people talking and calling Aaron out, some said he was flashing money around and all, others claiming he was feeding the coppers false information to help the Kelly Gang, but I left with a troubled mind that I had not planned on having, that's for sure.

I didn't see Joe for a while and it weighed heavy on me until at last I got a day off from the telegraph office, and I rode as quick as I could up to Greta, the late spring rains made it heavy going in the mud but I thought Kate might know what best to do, where they were. Kate were always calm, well she had to be I suppose, her and Tom Lloyd having the main task of making sure the supplies got through, passing on information as to where the coppers were and all, while evading the searches and the eyes of the traps themselves. What I had to tell her though was nothing like breaking news, Kate said that there were such stories all over Victoria, which Aaron being himself, well I think her words were "cocky effin bugger," refused to answer, but then Ned figured to stay one step ahead of Aaron Sherritt anyway. Aaron were just part of the tangled web of it all, spun round with Joe and all of their fates.

What Kate told me next made me heart quicken—they were coming back down from the ranges. Ned had an idea and a plan that was going to turn things all around and send them coppers running back to hide in Queen Victoria's skirts. He was gonna make Joe into a warrior who couldn't die, an ironclad man that couldn't be harmed by bullets. Kate said he had seen pictures of a ship called The Monitor, a huge indestructible armoured warship used in America that could withstand anything, and the Kelly Gang, well they were to build their own armour.

I will never forget my first glimpse of Joe as they arrived back, the first time I had seen him in weeks it were, and it made me catch me breath. Half stolen from me by the fucking coppers forcing them to live like dogs, he were dirty and hungry and weary and sick from the opium—the blaze that was Joe Byrne beaten down to a flicker. He was so thin I thought his bones might break if I touched him, and all I wanted to do was what he had asked me in that letter all those months ago, to soothe him and stoke that fire, to help him burn bright again. He were 23, and he knew how our folk saw him, alongside Ned, Steve and Dan he carried the hopes and dreams and expectations of all the rest of us. Well that was true, but he was also my Joe, and I just wanted him back too.

What Ned's plans did was bring us all round to thinking and planning with an eye to it being, well, finished if you like, one way or another. Oh Steve and Dan was full of it and Ned too, boasting that they would face down those coppers and force them to withdraw and make them release Ellen Quinn, there was even talk of a republic on nights when the beer was flowing freely, but Joe, well, he was mostly quiet.

I couldn't be away from him, every second I could I was there. Ah maybe Joe got fed up with me always on his lap or my hand in his, but he never said, he just used to grin at me and kiss me cheek, and well now I am glad that I did. If I could have crawled inside his skin to be even closer I would have.

There seemed like days on end while he drew detailed plans for suits of armour based on patterns he had seen in a book, a Chinese suit of armour all jointed and the most fearsome looking thing I ever saw. I can still see him now at that big wooden table, his face all intent and the pencil held tight in his strong hand, curls all spilling over his face, "Now what do yer make of that, Evie? That'll be sure to give Hare the fright of his life, wouldn't yer say?" He were meticulous with it, maybe it took his mind off other things, because whilst bit by bit his face filled out and his eyes started to sparkle again, he slept badly, turning on the mattress and waking suddenly. I worried about the nights I couldn't stay with him, when he had no one to hold him.

Mind…ah Christ..I would take a thousand of those fretful nights in place of the peace I have now. You will have to let me catch my breath a minute.

Alright, where was I? Weeks went by where all we did was meet with farmers and selectors, they seemed to seep out of the hillsides and the towns, seemed like everyone had heard of the bloody Monitor and wanted to help fortify it. Some days we were surrounded by people out in the bush, it were a wonder they didn't have bunting up and a band playing like it were a festival holiday or something. The bush forges filled with donated metal that was being bent and hammered into shapes that would cover their chests and their heads and, God willing, save them from whatever it was that was round the next corner.

It were a truly inspiring summer to tell the truth. It made me think of me Da and all his stories about how people come together in times of need. Despite having next to nothin' and you'd think wanting to hold on to what little they had, here they was, the poorest selectors willingly giving up their plough boards for the Kelly Gang's armour, machinery that, well to be frank, would make the difference between making their repayments or not. Seems to me that people can do great things if they set their mind to it, things that you would never expect.

Joe, well, he were happy sitting in the middle of it all, a cigarette in his mouth, plans and papers and measurements in his hands. I would be nearby watching him painstakingly explain and transfer the lines and the numbers from the paper into an image in the head of someone who spent their life not looking up from the dirt they were ploughing, then see him smile and clap them on the back when they got it. He just made people see themselves and things differently.

He was beautiful—those flames licking up higher now. You could see it again in how Joe talked all serious and intense, how he walked like the ground was his, the strength returning to him. We were together often, but to be truthful, it were different to those lazy afternoons we had spent with his legs all mixed up with mine, dreaming of ranches in America, this were faster and harder, like he was searching for something else, someplace else to go.

One Saturday night it were I watched him drift away from me again, back into Joe the warrior not my lover, his eyes sharper at the edges, like they couldn't quite stop focussing, but on anything except me. Me legs were still shaking from the power of him, Joe would burn you up when he loved you like that, and I took a deep breath in. Climbing on top of him I sat on his belly, the smooth of his skin, that little line of hair, and the edges of his bones against my thighs and me body, and I bent to hold his face in me hands, "Joe...look at me."

Well he could make you melt with those eyes, and despite a few moves of his head, which I pulled him back from, I got the full force of them in the end. "What is it, Evie? You need some more? Give me a minute, lass." He was smiling now, teasing me, his hands moving up me thighs, and despite me intentions he made me shiver.

"Well I just might…" a little raspy me voice, I don't doubt, "but I want to talk to you…want to know where you left the rest of Joe Byrne."

He looked at me with a little frown, that crease between his brow that made me want to kiss him, but all the same this were too important. "I feel like you still got a door shut in that head of yours, Joe. Will ye take a bit of time away from that hammering and metal to come with me back to Beechworth?"

Joe grinned at me now, "A mystery tour, is it? Aye then, I'll go with ye."

I knew Mr. Cheshire at the telegraph office would be out of town that Sunday. He were well acquainted with the coppers and had been helping them establish the telegraph communications between the towns, in fact he thought he had it all sewn up, wires between the bank and the office and the police headquarters in Beechworth. They were communications I found it easy to muddle a little bit once in a while, a wrong word typed here or there, not that it wasn't easy to muddle a copper it seemed, but anyways he was out of town that Sunday, and his residence above empty. I had never been invited up to it, but one thing I did know was that he had a bath, a big brass one, arrived from Melbourne he told me. I suspect his reason for telling me was less to impress me with his home furnishings than see if I might want to try it out, but I was certain he wasn't intending me to bring an outlaw there.

Despite the heat Joe kept his collar up and his hat on, and well, his beard had grown a bit since last he was in Beechworth. We kept to the sides of the road until I slipped me hand into the porch to find the key Mr. Cheshire left there "in case of emergencies," he said, "the constabulary may need to be alerted at any time." He were full of his own importance and no mistake, so much so that one might say he ignored the snake in his own woodpile.

It didn't take much to get through the door and up the stairs, to where Mr. Cheshire's shiny brass bath stood in the kitchen. It took pans and pans of water, I thought it would take a month of Sundays to be full, but at last it was, and I pulled Joe up to stand in front of me. It were a bit hard to concentrate, to tell the truth, he could just overwhelm you with want, oh see I am smiling now, but once you got yer hands on his hips and yer fingers in those buttons, it were all promise and me body took over, other considerations tending to float out the window.

But despite meself I stepped back and watched him pull his belt through the buckle with a snap, undo buttons too slowly and slide his pants down over hips I wanted to feel against mine. I just couldn't help but look at him, me eyes doing the caressing me fingers were tingling to do. His long body slipped under the water, I had even found some soap to make a foam of bubbles and Jesus…well I tell yer when his head came back up through the water, drips on his lashes and water shaking down through those curls, I had to close my eyes.

He was smiling at me, "You gonna help me then?" and he had that devil in his eye that would have women flocking.

"Aye, well lie still then," and once I got to touching him and he laid back against the bath with those beautiful eyes shut and his shoulders sinking down into the warm water, I remembered why we came. I let me fingers run over his tan skin, smooth and gentle and like silk them fine ladies wear, making him sigh and breath slow like he was almost asleep, me hands stroking down along his long legs and his now strong arms made thicker by all that hammering, across his belly that was as flat as a plough share itself, and around shoulders that carried more than he should.

Despite a few months of good eating he were still him, still bones and muscle like steel, he was what they wanted, a warrior. And here I was washing him, and well, maybe making him ready for what was going to happen. I heard in church once that the priests used to anoint their soldiers, and maybe there is a lightening bolt aiming for me right now, but that's what it felt like. I can still feel him now in my fingers, they want to remember him too, the rhythm of them lulling him and me off someplace else, some place warm and safe.

"Joe," no more than a breath really, just a brush of me lips on his arm as it draped over the side of the bath, I didn't want to make him move but I did need to talk to him. "I want all of you," and I didn't mean his body, though there was little chance that we would be leaving without giving each other that too.

He didn't open his eyes but his fingers came to my face, like it would be too much to feel and see at the same time. "Evie…we are gonna give them a show like they never seen, gonna make them think twice about the way that they lord it over all us colonials…and maybe Ned is right…maybe we will get them to stop. I can do it, and you know I that I will, lass. We've come this far that there's no way now except through, but..."

His fingers traced me face and touched me lips as we sat there in the sinking afternoon sun through the window, the water curling his hair all round his ears. "But what, Joe? Will you just tell me? I need to hear you say it, if only to me."

I wish he hadn't opened his eyes. "I don't want to leave you, Evie. Jesus, I don't want to."

Well you can see me now, but right then I bit me lip to stop it quivering. If I was gonna make him say it, then I had to hear it.

"I don't know how to be that man they all want me to be, to be the hard killer of coppers and the soldier, and to take what is coming, which is more than likely the cloth of the undertaker if I am lucky. I don't know how to do that and be yer lover, Evie, because I am taking you to hell too."

"Oh Christ, Joe…"

"It's what is in my head, lass. Now I am not saying I ever wanted to die, but there've been times when I didn't care much either way. But it is harder now. You are a fine reason not to go to that place, and also a witness I both want and can't stand to think of..."

Jesus, but he was crying then, and me too, and I couldn't do anything but hold him tighter, "shushing" him and trying to make it stop.

A watery voice I didn't know I had, "Aaron said I should take you away with me."

"Aye, well maybe he speaks some sense sometimes," even a small smile from him.

"But it might be alright, Joe. Ned has plans and all, doesn't he?"

"Yes he does, Evie. We will take over the whole colony, don't you know," he was wiping his face but serious now, holding me eyes with his. "Evie, now you know, I have to do this, and I was keeping you away so it didn't hurt you so much. Ah shit, now who am I kidding?" I couldn't see him bend under it.

"Joe, If you need to be one of those Chinese warriors for Ned and for you and for me and for all of us, and well, there is no place I want to go that is without you. I will load your pistol for you if you want. It's my fight too, I told you that before on the top of the hill by my mother's."

"Christ, but that was a long time ago. You were so scared."

"So it was, and I was nowhere near as scared as I am now, but I am still here."

I can't tell you for crying now, but it sealed it all, him and me and no space between us. And then I could touch him, make him hard and want me with him in that water, and it were lucky Mr. Cheshire got delayed because Joe and me, well we about loved each other 'til we couldn't hardly move. And that was him back, looking me right in the eyes while I melted in his heat—Joe Byrne blazing bright as the Australian sun.

Ah...we needed that time for what came next.

I had been visiting me Da one late Sunday afternoon, and just preparing to leave, well I had stepped out and pulled me shawl tighter against the air, when Jimmy steps outside and catches me arm. "Evie," his voice was no more than a whisper, "me mate in Wangaratta heard Aaron Sherritt mouthing off about the armour Ned has built, says he had a good night out with Hare on account of it. Aaron told the coppers about The Monitor, told them everything they have, down to the fact of where it's buried for safekeeping. Me mate heard it, Evie, and he's as loyal to the Kelly's as you are."

Well me blood stopped pumping right there and then, all drained from me head and me stomach so I thought I might fall. "Jesus! Oh effing hell, Jimmy. What shall I do?"

He just looked at me. "Tell Ned and Joe, Evie, that's what you got to do!"

That ride was never so hard, and I can't tell you how many times I almost turned back, Christ, I can feel me stomach churning right now to think of it. It was dark by the time I scrambled up the bank to where I knew they'd been camped the last week. Joe's smile was so wide it made me wince.

"Evie, ah well you made me night now, come get warm," but then a frown, "lass, what's wrong?"

I sort of had to get it out before he touched me. I just had to, me voice out of breath and shaky. "It's Aaron…he's a stool pidgeon alright…he's told the coppers, Joe…about the armour."

Christ, well the world might have stopped turning that moment, and I watched him race through all the thoughts in his head—the denials, the "would she lie" questions, the months of rumours, and the feel of the water over his body as he and his friend landed splash in the creek as boys—and all in the second it took Steve, Dan, and Ned to jump to their feet. 

"He's a stinkin' proddy, just like his dad!" Steve spitting onto the baked earth.

"Aye, he's fuckin' traitor, you KNOW that Ned! Why d'yer let him take the piss out of us all this time, laughing at us, flashing money around? Bet he lets them coppers fuck his wife too for a few extra bob!" Dan no longer a boy but a man made bitter by his few years. Holy Mary, I thought Joe was gonna shoot them both, his hand on his pistol before Ned stepped between them.

"Tell me exactly what Jimmy said, Evie," Ned was hard and calm, but to be honest, I couldn't quite breathe for the way Joe was looking at me. So I did my best, and there was rows about all that had been said, but Joe was not listening exactly, just battles in his mind. He was pacing round like an animal caught in a pit, railing at the moon and then flashing sparks at Steve and Dan. I was shaking like a spring leaf in the breeze, and Jesus, I just wanted to hold him, but he might just explode if I did.

And then Joe cursed loud and walked into the dark, and every muscle in my body moved after him even if me head was not convinced I should. "Leave him, Evie. Let him go, lass," the last words I heard from Ned, but I couldn't, I just couldn't let him go.

I followed the sound of his crashing footsteps through the bush until he stopped at a ridge, of course he knew I was behind him, but he didn't turn round. "What are you doing here, Evie? What do you want?" His voice was taken off by the wind in part, and I were glad it was, I didn't want to hear all that sharpness.

But when he did turn round I wished he hadn't, I had never seen his face like that. "Jesus, Joe..." I couldn't manage much else.

"What, Evie? What do you want from me?" and as I stood there in front of him, I watched him tearing up everything he could reach. "You want this?" and he pulled at his belt, my sobs and cry of "no" making him look at the sky before he closed his eyes for a second, his brows all knotted, a breath of sorry.

"Well, what then? You want me to say, 'Yes, you are right, Evie! Me best friend sold me to the coppers?' Fuck it!" It was so jagged it hurt to hear it. Joe, whose voice could charm birds out of trees, now a serrated edge. "He wouldn't do it! He wouldn't betray me! We grew up together, done everything together, he is just trying to help me! You know nothing about it. Get back to yer life, Evie, go back to Beechworth and yer job. There is nothing here!"

I don't know what it was, but I pulled meself up. All this time we was together, and it weren't the big important Joe and his woman, it were me and him. So I made myself be who I was too, me voice as loud as his, despite the tears running down me face. "I don't have a fuckin' life, Joe, and neither do you! They are gonna kill you, armour or no. You know it, and as God is my witness, I hope they finish me off while they are at it!"

Joe looked straight back at me and I took a deep breath, "Aaron has betrayed you, Joe. He already did it, whether you believe it or not right now. I don't know if it matters now either, but I love you so much it makes me ache, and I'll no more leave you than jump off this ridge. Everything is here"

He went to walk away from me but almost like he couldn't, he needed to hear himself speak, see what it sounded like to say it, to say he was betrayed. "Evie…"

But he weren't ready yet, not ready to look it in the face that Aaron was a traitor, and this time I let him go. How I got back home, I couldn't tell you, full of tears and, to be truthful, a part of me would have shot Aaron myself if I had a gun and I thought it would make Joe hurt any less. I just knew that it wouldn't.

It were a couple of days later, when I was sitting at me desk that the bell sounded, another telegraph to transcribe in a blur of days where I could hardly think for missing him, days when news of coppers digging up fields came trickling into every bar. Only this message was different.

_Our informer has been shot. Repeat. Aaron Sherritt has been shot._

I could feel my stomach retch. This was it. The thing was begun.

home next


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13 – Nothing Compares To You**

I barely heard Mr. Cheshire shouting "Miss McBride! Where do you think you are going?" as I ran out of the office and started down the street. By the time I reached the Crawford's coach business on the edge of town, I was gasping for breath and me head was in a whirl, I could only think of getting to him. One of the lads who looked after the coach horses had a shine for me and what I needed was a horse, I didn't care what he wanted in return after, I just had to get to Joe.

Within 10 minutes of reading that telegram, I was racing over the plains outside Beechworth towards Greta, no idea where exactly I was going, but trusting to whoever it was that had got me this far that they would guide me. I knew he couldn't go to Ned's selection, nor his mother's, the coppers had burnt down the shack they'd stayed in last winter, and while I rode I became more and more desperate. He could be anywhere, all them caves and hideouts, their supporters would just swallow them up like quicksand if they had to, he could be anywhere...except that I knew he would be needing me. And every minute I was away from him knowing that, it were like a knife twisting in me gut.

"Jimmy…Jimmy will help me look" is what I thought. I had a good look behind me to make sure I wasn't followed and then pulled the horse up to cross Oven's River, taking a detour past our selection. Holy Mary, I tell ye that Darragh at the coach business must have liked me a lot because the horse he gave me could run alright and it weren't long before I could see the ridge above me mother's house, well me eyes were all blurred from the sun and wind but I knew where I was, what I was struggling to make out was a figure and a horse by the tree at the top. Christ, of course it were him, just like those few years ago, of course he would come there! Well I tell you, I could have beat that horse in a race if I had to run then, it had hardly stopped before I was off its back and I had Joe in me arms.

He buried his face in me neck and I just held him as tight as I could and whispered his name, saying anything that came into me head in amoungst crying for him. I really wanted to see his face, look in his eyes, but he was holding on tight and I could feel his tears on me skin, a shake in his body that I couldn't stop no matter how I pulled him closer. When I finally got him to sink down to the ground with me and could pull his head away from me shoulder, I swear I cried out to see him, nothing to do but wipe his face with me fingers. His eyes were as dark as night, I never seen anything like it, they were like a hole in his soul, his beautiful long lashes all matted with wet and salt, the only curtain there was to cover all that exposed pain.

"I shot him, Evie, I fuckin' shot Aaron, me friend and a bloody traitor. Jesus forgive me!" and his head was back to look at the sky. Well I suppose I guessed it had been him, he wouldn't have let anyone else take his friend's life, Christ they had spent their time watching each other's backs, but to hear him say the words made me sway.

"Joe, I know...well I thought, that's why I came looking for yer."

He couldn't hardly even speak. "There's only you left, Evie."

Oh God, I don't think I can tell yer, I can't tell yer how me heart was being ripped out of me, this man I loved like nothing else, was just in pieces in front of me, and all he thought he had was me.

"That's not true. You have Ned and the others and yer mother and all of us, you have all of us."

He struggled to stand up. "Evie, but I shot me friend, he were looking me right in the eyes and I still pulled the trigger!" Joe's hand was on his pistol now, pulled it out to twist the barrel, the cold metal was in his hands and I could read them, what his hands were thinking of doing.

"Joe! Put it down, for the love of God, put it down…"

"I am no good, I am gonna burn in Hell sure enough. I shot him in cold blood, he didn't even stand a chance, cold blood, right…" I could hear the barrel spinning while it all raced round his head. "Jesus, me and Ned talked about it, planned it, but it weren't nothing like I thought…Aaron was looking at me and…well fuck knows why he did it, but he shouldn't have been lying there in the dirt. Oh Christ! His face and his blood…his blood all spilled out over the ground and his Mary screaming, I could hear her voice in me head for miles after..."

It took some doing to get that gun off him and into me shawl. "Joe will yer look at me, please...Come back to me a minute." I don't know if he could see me to be truthful, but he let me hold his hands. "I don't know why he did it either. He did want to get you away from the gang, maybe some to save you and maybe some to have you for himself, have the life you had back. But it were gone, the coppers and the squatters and the effin Queen saw to that. And what he did, whatever the reason, he put you and Ned and all those folks who look to you, who need change, well, it put us all in danger. He betrayed us all, Joe. Oh, I am so sorry I can't make it all go away…"

Me hand stroked down through those dark curls to his neck, "you remember the last time we was here?" He just looked at me and nodded, a flash of happier times across his face. "You were so beautiful, you still are. You were waiting for me then too, with a cigarette and all cocky because you knew, ah well I think you knew the moment you saw me that I was yours. Anyhow, you said to Michael 'it seems to me that Evie can speak for herself' and I can, Joe, and I say you had no choice. You did what had to be done, and Christ that doesn't make it any easier, but if doing what you needed to will send you to hell, then God has no business pretending He knows what's right."

He was just like a raw nerve stripped of its skin, with only a small idea of how to cover itself. "Well I don't now about that, but maybe I am gonna find out soon enough. Will yer hold onto me, lass…?" And I would have held him right there until we both turned to dust.

It were late into the afternoon before we left, I don't suppose he had slept all the night before, and if all I could give him was some rest, then that was enough for now. I just kept his head in me lap and me body close around his as much as I could.  
"Where has Ned gone, Joe?" I whispered just soft to him as he woke up, a moment before he tensed up again with memory.

"Glenrowan, I said to meet him on the road to Glenrowan. Jesus it's late, come with me, Evie."

We had ridden together before many times, followed each other over hills and valleys and it weren't far to the crossing of King River, I could see the Warby Ranges in the distance, and whilst I didn't know why we were heading to Glenrowan, the dark of those mountains held it all. We took it slower after the crossing, watching for traps and skirting trees. Joe, well he just focussed on where we were, keeping me close and his Winchester closer still. I might have pitied any copper that crossed our path.

It were just on the rise above the road from Greta to Glenrowan that I saw the most strangest charabanc I ever saw in me life. There were carriages and carts, cages on wheels, and caravans all following each other, and at the front was a familiar figure. I must have turnedand smiled"It's Ned," because he smiled back.

We left a trail of dust down the bank before we pulled up in front of the caravan. "Will yous be wanting to join the circus then?" Ned winked at me.

"Aye, that we will," before anyone could speak.

"Well that's grand. This here is the circus master, the Great Orlando," Ned indicated the most impressive ol' fella with enormous whiskers, an even more enormous hat, and the most dewy blue eyes I ever saw. "Orlando, meet the fabulous Joe Byrne who can shoot a gold sovereign out of the sky while on horseback amoungst many other exceptional things, and well, I am not sure what Evie McBride here can do for the circus, except maybe a little magic…" His eyes were flashing "Thank God you got him here" and maybe that was magic enough.

We carried through to the town in a procession and I wondered if I were in a dream and had yet to wake up, oh how I wished that were true too. This was nothing like I ever saw, there were animals of all sorts in cages, monkeys making a racket, animals with humps in their backs, and a huge cat with hair all around—a lion, well I never thought I would see a lion from Africa! There were women painted like warriors and men so short I wondered if they were children, and we all rode into Glenrowan as the sun set on the longest day, or so I thought.

It were like a reception party when we got there, Mrs. Jones at the Inn ushering us in to the dark bar, drinks all round and smiling faces. And when Ned stood up to address the folks sitting round, the penny finally dropped in me head that once the shooting of Aaron had been decided on, the plan was set in motion if yer like, Aaron's death, whether desired or not, was the trigger to the next stage. Most of the folks there were nodding and agreeing as Ned outlined the course of events, all except a rather sullen looking group tabled in the corner. "Three guesses who those fellas are," Joe winked at me, but I could spot a copper at 60 paces myself by now.

The plan seemed all settled; they chose the place, the time, arranged a full moon even. As expected, Hare had responded to Aaron's death by calling for troops to come en masse to the area, information was coming in from all directions that the coppers were on the move and that there would be a special train from Benalla full of police the next night. Ned was at pains to point out that they would be pulling the tracks up after the last passenger train went through, and that whilst he hoped the crash would send a whole load of them coppers to kingdom come, the rest would be taken hostage, their release dependent on his mother's.

Well to be honest with you, I couldn't quite take it in. Here I was, Evie McBride, sitting in a bar full of circus folk, outlaws, and townspeople who seemed to think there was nothing at all peculiar in planning to turnover a train and declare a republic, nevermind release Ned's mother, and all the while animals I had never seen the like of before bellowed and roared outside the door. You'd have thought it were a new holiday someone invented, the only serious faces were those of men who arrived frequently to talk in hushed voices with Ned and Joe before disappearing out into the night again, Kelly folk, Joe told me, who were to be part of the events that happened after the police were brought down. I felt like pinching meself.

Joe was more solid now. He were Ned's right-hand man, and whatever was going on behind those eyes, he knew he had to keep there, this was a time to be that warrior and make them all believe. He had been given one of them long drover coats and it suited him. I had to smile at him walking round with his hands in his pockets, that gun stuck down the waistband of his pants, and that intense look about him that I first saw in the bar in Beechworth as if the world was his for the asking.

Anyhow the end of the night appeared to be signalled by men falling asleep at the tables and Mrs. Jones pulling the cover over the cage of the bright red parrot on the bar. It had been taught to say "Ned Kelly" though it was much better at nipping the fingers of anyone foolish enough to get too close. Joe were on first watch and despite me protests he convinced me to go up and find a room, suggesting something about getting the bed warm, aye that might have been the winning argument, well that and a very welcome grin. To be truthful, I was fair worn out, and it was good to lie flat and feel the cool mattress under me, for all the noise to stop and to just stare at the dark ceiling.

I might have been asleep an hour or it might have been three, I had no way of knowing and I never even heard him come in the room. The next I knew, a cold body was slipping into the covers next to mine, the tip of a tongue in me ear, and a grinning whisper in his soft voice, "Well now, Evie McBride, I could have been anyone sneaking in here, you'd not have noticed."

I could feel meself waking up as sure as if the cock just crowed—will yer stop that laughing now—aye perhaps it did. Anyhow I turned round to face him and could just feel a prickle of icy skin where our body's touched, me breasts against his chest, and his thigh working its way between mine. "Christ Joe, you are freezin'." I jumped when his hands reached round me back, but it were more of a shiver of something else that followed them down to me hips.

He were always good at kissing, sometimes we would do that for hours, just touching lips and tongues and sucking little teases of things, but right now he wanted to talk too. So I let him tell me how much he loved me, and how tomorrow was a big day, perhaps the biggest we ever seen, and how he wanted to have his cock in my body, and how they would have to fight like lions, and how he wanted to hear all those little noises I made when he loved me, and how if it turned out that they managed not to get shot to hell we would ride away someplace for a while, and how he wanted to open me legs wide to have all of him, and how even if they did get shot to hell, we were here now, and how he was so hard at the thought of letting go inside me that he was aching, all between kisses that made me world shrink down to right there, and well I tell yer, I was nearly done in before he did what he wanted. All the while his hands were covering me, stroking and rubbing at me breasts, pulling me hips against his and making me spine tingle, his voice all deep and soft, sometimes I could not hear it, only feel it against me skin.

"Tell me how it feels, Evie," is what he asked me, and it weren't about some "I am the fabulous Joe Byrne," but I think it were about wanting to have it in his head what difference he made, if you understand me. Outside the door was a whole stage for him with his place all settled, expectations and plans, but right then he wanted to know what he did to me. Ah, and he just did have a notion of how his words made me almost beg him, so there were some of that too, don't yer think?

"I done a load of reading, Evie," him smiling now, his hands sliding right down over me and between me thighs, pressing them apart, "but I never found out what it feels like, never met a woman who could tell me before neither."

It were just as well that those next door was asleep or drunk because the feel of his fingers made me cry out, I could feel me hips pressing down all the while he were swirling and moving, pulling me out of meself. It didn't help to look at him to be honest, the look of his mouth and his face making me sway some more, a deep breath and I managed to mumble about it feeling like I was on fire or some such thing, I can't rightly remember. What I wanted to touch him too, I loved his cock, ah now I am blushing but I did, and I slipped me hand down over it, he were just perfect, smooth and hard like metal but warm too, and yer couldn't help but want to make him groan.

I heard the roughness in his breath, "Tell me what it's like to feel me fingers Evie, I want to hear yer."

He went so deep it took me voice, I didn't know if the sound would come out of me mouth, but I tried all the same. "It is beautiful…Joe…your fingers feel beautiful..." There were a break I am sure when he moved faster, it were pulling him closer too, I could feel him sliding in me hand, wet and ready for me and it made me whole body shake. I could hardly breathe nevermind talk, "It feels like every nerve knows it's you, every inch, but especially there inside" I stopped to cry out a bit " right there, Jesus, is screaming with happiness…that's what it feels like" the last bit disappearing into a moan, he was looking so dark I swear I nearly drowned.

"And if I do that?…" his thumb circled around that other place, and I think I bit his shoulder to stop meself waking the Queen herself all the way over in her palace in London, England.

"Jesus…Joe, can you not feel? Every bit of me wants you, I am soaked and all hot and I want you…Oh, will I write you a book tomorrow?" I was almost sobbing. The meaning of all that I had managed to say just stopped him for a moment. I think I just squirmed some more on his fingers, demanding "Just love me, will yer?"

He didn't answer except to look at me, it was like slow motion—the time before you know something big is going to happen. I can recall reaching up to him but not feeling anything, not the bed I was lying on, not the air entering me mouth, only that his cock was right there, and I could do nothing else but open up to him, let him slide in so far that I couldn't hardly focus.

"Evie, stay here with me, lass. I need you here." His hand was on me face and his lips kissing me, bringing me back to feel it was really us, really him.

"Joe, I need yer not to stop," me hands on that perfect curve and pulling him into me even more, almost panic in me voice, that it would be ripped from me.

"You know I can't anyhow…" his words were failing him then too. Well we moved together in perfect timing, all full and wet, to that place we went so often, the seconds of grace before we were falling over one another. He were the best lover, maybe everyone says that about the person they want the most, but well he made me want to cover him with kisses and thank yous, and I figured he needed to know.

The next day were taken up with preparations, people arriving with the armour and guns and bullets, and me holding him tight, it were full of that too. Whatever fears we had were taken over by preparations and drinking and sometimes you even forgot why we were there. The tracks proved more difficult than they thought to pull up, but there were no shortage of volunteers—it seemed that there was some hope after all.

It were early evening when Joe took me hand and told me it we were going to take the watch on the hill. It were always possible that the coppers would be coming some other way too and we needed to know, so happy as a pig in shit I sailed out of there with him to sit on a cold hilltop looking down over Glenrowan.

We talked for those hours there—about me Da and about his, the way that things had turned out—it was just calm and gentle with me lying back against him, sitting as far as I could back between his legs and feeling the sound of his voice against me back. After awhile I saw him squint toward the sky, that full moon they wanted was getting lost behind a thick veil of rain clouds.

"Time we should get back to the inn?" Jesus, I was happy, funny now I think of it, but I was.

"You aren't coming back there, Evie."

I turned round in his lap and stared at him, me mouth open. "What do you mean? Where are we going then?"

"I mean you aren't going back to the Glenrowan Inn, lass. Just me."  
Well he might just as well have said that me Da was an Orangeman, I was frowning and starting to pull away from him. "There's no way you can stop me, Joe Byrne. If you think I am letting you fight down there on yer own,.." the first inklings of what he was meaning filtering through to me, ah it were all flooding back now, the dream of the last day splintering. "I can shoot and load yer gun…No Joe, you can't do it without me…don't…"

He looked right back at me, his eyes wandering over me face and his fingers on me lips. "I want you to stay with some folks of ours on the edge of town."

"You are fuckin' mad! Why would I do that?" I was struggling to find me words, my hands grabbing at his, "Joe I love you, I don't want to live without you...Oh no, you can't…I won't let you."

Jesus, he was so perfect—the lines of his bones, his mouth, his dark brown eyes—all softened by those curls that just went wherever they pleased. The first spatters of rain were falling round us and the wind picked up, but he didn't notice, he just took me face in those big hands of his. "Evie, you are all I have." I could feel his hands shaking, "I killed Aaron, and the coppers are coming for us. They will have plenty of guns, and they won't care to take us alive, it's a war and no mistake."

I felt like a horse had kicked me in the gut, looking back up at him and breaking away to wipe me tears so I could see him better. "Joe don't, oh Christ, don't leave me, I don't want to be where you aren't, I want to come with you!" I was just sobbing loud and clutching his jacket, but he pulled me to the front of him. The rain was falling harder on us, waves of complete and utter desperation shaking through me.

"Joe, you can't ask me to do that, I can't sit some other place while...oh Jesus, I can't!" I wanted to hit something, just stop it from being as it was, I wanted to hold him at gunpoint, make him take me or kill me, "Joe don't ask me...please don't."

"I have to and you can, me beauty. You can because you are as strong and as brave as me, and I AM asking you. I need you to be safe. Christ, I don't want to see you like him, like Aaron." His eyes were burning me skin, "Will yer grant me that? I love yer lass…but there will be no justice and no quarter given down there, I can't be who I need to be and protect yer."

I was staring back at him now shaking my head, "I don't want you to protect me, Joe. I will stay down, I will hide out the back with the others, I will do anything you say, but not this, don't send me away from you!"

Waves and waves of it were just crashing over me and not even his arms would secure me, more and more desperate pleas to him finding no answer, "Just shush, Evie…shush."

"I can't know what will happen, lass, well I know for certain them coppers will be mad and determined, as cruel as they ever were, but there's no way of knowing what they will do. I'll not ask you for anything ever again, Evie, you will be free to do whatever you chose." I was just a shivering mess in his arms, the whole of me railing against even the thought of losing him, it were a physical reaction as sure as anything, and he lifted me on to his lap,

"Will you do it for me, Evie? Oh for Christ's sake…Let me do something right in me life, let me save one thing I love."

He gathered me up and just held onto me, taking all me sobs and wails and folding them all up to save them for himself, Jesus, he would need them.

He wasn't gonna give up, he pulled me up to untether the horses and I just staggered down the hill with him, the rain soaking through my dress and hammering onto our heads, well it weren't no holy water and that's for sure. I kept looking over at him, like it was not going to be this way, I wasn't going to let it, something else should happen. Why didn't one of them saints they always tell about, one who understands the suffering of us mortals, at least break the fucking clouds and stop it raining? But not one did, and it kept pouring water over us from someplace they call heaven.

By the time we got near to a few buildings, a new wave was building up inside me, a wail of "no" that I didn't want to silence and the longing to hold him closer and not let go was just overwhelming me. I grabbed his hand and pulled him over to the overhang of a roof by the side of the trail to give us a little shelter. "Joe, what can I do? You are gonna go off there, and you might not come back. Oh Jesus, you might never love me again, I might not see you again, I don't think I could live anymore!" I was just beside meself, me hands in his hair just pleading with him, ah fuck maybe Aaron was right all along.

He were looking out at the dark sky, his hands above me shoulders, he were looking for something that would change it, but there was nothing except clouds and rain. "I have to, Evie, you know I have to." He was holding me face then, "Kiss me..."

"Oh Jesus!" They were all-consuming and desperate kisses, his mouth and mine all open, we would have been one if we could, our hands pulling us together like we were gonna sink into the mud around our feet if we let go, our hands were all over each other, but the sound of a kerloo in the bush made us stand stock still. It were just time.

"Evie, I will never leave you, lass, I won't, not really," his voice were about as sore and crackly as mine. "It's just the way things are. You wouldn't be here if I was anyone else, now would yer?" A gentle kiss just brushed me lips then and I took a deep breath, and pulled meself up.

"No, no I wouldn't." Me face was searching his for any indication that he thought he wasn't coming back, and whatever he thought, he was hiding it well.

"So you will go to the Flannigan's and stay there tonight."

I swallowed deep. He didn't really look at me but took the horses' reins and led us on to a shack just outside the town. A rap on the door was greeted by what were obviously friendly folk, but to be truthful, I had no regard for them or anyone right then.

Joe, he took me whole body in his arms, kissing me hair while I just buckled against his chest, I held him so tight like I would never let go, his whisper broke through me sobs, "You have to believe tonight, Evie, for them, promise me…"

"Then promise me you will come back." I have to confess I couldn't hold myself together, I have never known aching like it, if I thought I was hurting all that time ago before he came back to me, it were nothing to what I felt then and he were still in me arms.

"I can't promise that, my beauty," he was just holding on too. The man behind me, Mr. Flannigan, was wanting to close the door against the rain, " but I do promise that I love yer." Joe turned and leapt up on his horse, he leaned down to take a last touch of me face with his fingers, and then he was gone.

I am sorry. I can't say anymore…a minute…

I don't have a clue at all how I didn't follow him. I thought of it a thousand times, pulled me shawl round me, walked to the door, I even opened it a few times, but Mrs. Flannigan stood in front of me to stop me getting out. "He said you would try to go, but that you mustn't. Come on, love, come sit down. It'll be alright, they've got it all planned, so they have."

Nothing prepared me for the sound of gunfire. Despite the fact she didn't know me from Adam nor Eve for that matter, Mrs. Flannigan let me bury me head in her lap, me hands over me ears to stop the sound of it. There were times we thought it had all stopped and we would try to look out the window, then there would be more volleys and shouts that carried over the sound of rain beating on the tin roof 'til you couldn't tell anymore and we just waited, the embers dying in the grate as the night drew on.

Hours later a sudden bang on the door made me already frayed nerves jump out of me skin. "The Glenrowan Inn! It's burnin'!"

And then I ran. As the new dawn of the rest of me life broke, I ran to that place that was lighting up the sky more brightly than the sun.

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	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14 – I'd Trade All My Tomorrows For One Single Yesterday**

Though I didn't know it right then, the Police special train back to Benalla had already left Glenrowan carrying Superintendent Hare, the wounded Ned Kelly, and the body of my Joe. I had left the Flannigans far behind and was standing in the middle of mud and guns and wafts of smoke and people, grabbing anyone I could to tell me where he was. There were too many shaking heads, too many sad eyes, and too many confused questions about "what should we do now?" as the coppers hauled people off for me to hold onto anything but a thin shred of hope. I got plenty of pieces to put together, about the coppers firing on women and children, how the armour that had the traps thinking they were fighting the bloody Monitor itself, about how the train hadn't been derailed on account of that effin' bastard Curnow, but nothing about what I was almost screaming for, "What about Joe?...Where's Joe Byrne?"

"He's dead, love, I saw them pull him out of there meself, before the flames took a hold, it were. Joe Byrne dead, now I'd not have thought it was possible, he could do anything, they said. Did yer know him then?" I can hear that voice in me head right now.

I couldn't speak, just sank down into the water and the dirt and stared at the place he went, rocking and wiping me face, screaming in me head and cursing him. Joe should have let me…what?…should have let me do what? Well I didn't know—stand in front of him, make him take me someplace different, love him one more time, let me hold his hand when he got hit…anything, anything, just so this wasn't how this day would have begun. I couldn't let me mind even touch it, not even the edge of the fact that he had gone and he had left me alone. Joe…he hadn't had me there to hold him when he needed me most of all, and the grief of it split me heart in two. I would have laid down and died there too if I could have got me body to do what I wanted.

More and more people was arriving, coppers from all over New South Wales and Victoria and our folk too. There were legs brushing past me, some people trying to lift me up, but I couldn't even think of standing up until there were shouts. People were shouting at the coppers to "give them back" and I half crawled and half stumbled to see, just a flicker of hope that maybe it was him. The rain had done a good job of dousing the flames and I had to turn me face away from what was emerging from the smoking pile of the Glenrowan Inn, two bodies…the coppers had two blackened bodies.

"Yer bastards...you'll not have them too! Give us back Steve Hart and Dan Kelly!" There was movement all round me, a push of people that I stumbled away from and watched through a blur. People were shouting and pressing coppers who were unprepared for them. A wave of anger took the two Australian sons back home, two black lumps wrapped tenderly in blankets and spirited away, but Ned and Joe, well they were gone to who knows where.

Hours passed and I didn't know to move. Well I was shivering and crying, just sitting there with no idea what I would do in the next minute apart from just exactly that, never mind the rest of me life. I couldn't see how it would even have a shape without him.

"Evie, thank Christ I found yer."  
Holy Jesus! Aye, I know what you are thinking- I wished it were him too.

But it were just Jimmy behind me, his hands pulling me up. "Ma sent me to bring you home, the news is all over Victoria, and she said to bring back that horse belonging to the Crawfords too, says she will never live it down having a thief for a son, a husband, and a daughter too." Me Ma, she sent Jimmy to get me, and a message too—me Da WERE a thief and she married him all the same, because she loved him.

Jimmy could have taken me anywhere, I didn't really notice the direction until we approached our selection and I had to shut my eyes to stop meself from seeing the tree on the rise. Before I went through the door I begged him to go and get me stuff from Beechworth, no chance I would still have a job anyhow, even if I wanted to go back there, but what I did want was Joe's letter and that egg. I think Jimmy would have jumped in the creek if he thought it would help, he could see me heart breaking, and he rode off to do me bidding.

The hours, days, and weeks that followed were like half living. Sometimes I would go for an hour without me heart being ripped out of me because I would not hear Joe's voice ever again, and sometimes I would wake up in the morning and have a moment of bliss before I remembered the world didn't have him in it anymore. But most times I didn't, there were no let up in the rage and sadness I felt, I were completely powerless to stop it. And he wasn't coming back no matter how much I cried or wailed. God weren't gonna take pity on me and send Joe back.

Me Ma didn't say much at first. She let me be, cooked for me, and let me lie in bed sometimes when there weren't work to be done. But, well, she held me up for those demonstrations that followed, she let me cry all night in her arms, and she let me know that she weren't really disappointed in me. Oh, she was never a woman to say she were wrong, and maybe she wasn't really—she knew from the start who Joe was, and like any mother, she wanted to stop me from getting to precisely where I was right then. But now that it were done, she took him into her heart too. She were the one that added his name to our family's prayers, and though I never went back to visit Father O'Donohue, Joe were mentioned on me mother's insistence at mass.

Me Da, well he tiptoed round me, patting me hand and looking at me with those sad old eyes of his that made me weep some more. Between me and Maggie, there weren't nothing we could say. I stayed with her sometimes, just because we both needed to hold on, we talked about him and cried together and to be truthful, I needed to be where he had been. I can't tell ye how much I missed him, how much I wanted him back, how much I still do.

But I am getting all mixed up now. Benalla it was, that was where they took Ned and Joe to after Glenrowan. Ned was shot to hell, but they needed to save him so they could hang him…make us see him hang. I picked up more news as the weeks went on, more little details that I wanted desperately and didn't want to know all the same. Rumours traveled fast in that web of Irish colonials, and I heard things that made me scream at God for letting it happen, for not striking them down for what they did to Joe.

Me Da burnt the paper that had a picture of Joe hung up like a dog outside Benalla police station. Aye they hung him up on a door and they tried to get a gun to stick in his hand, make him be an authentic outlaw for the photos, but Joe well he had a mind of his own even when he were dead it seemed, and he kept dropping it whilst they hoisted him up and down and tried to make it looked like he weren't hanging. Those bastards! It were all about killing off our spirit, making us kowtow to them…I am glad I never saw it.

Me Da said an English artist there, fella by the name of Julian Ashton I think it were, turned his back to protest the barbarity of it, and well Mr. Ashton, if I had met him I would have shaken his hand for that small gesture, from the rest of us who couldn't be there to stop them. I also heard that a woman ran up and hugged Joe's body, pleaded with them to take him down, I don't know who she was…Christ! I can't bear to think of it, that beautiful man treated worse than an animal. I wish sometimes it had been me, that I had got to hug him, just for a moment, but well maybe she just carried us all with her that day, gave him a bit of love from us all, and I thank her for that.

Tom Lloyd he went to plead for Joe's body, to bring him back home, but they already buried it, buried it behind the police station in a last insult to Joe, with none of us there to say goodbye. They even had the gall to say no one had claimed his body, but I am sure Ned won't mind me quoting him, they were 'the biggest thieves and liars the sun ever shone on," and that's how it was. Yes, we wanted Joe back and yet they buried him all the same, with no mark and no priest for whatever that was worth. They concluded in their joke of an inquest, which took all of a part of an afternoon that same day don't yer know, that Joe's death were a "lawful killing" and that was that. Aye they knew there were rumblings of discontent all over, and as I got me strength back I would be there too.

The police decided after all that they wasn't gonna try and reclaim Steve and Dan's bodies from their families…and it were an effin' good job too, there's no telling what would have happened. Whatever the coppers hoped to kill that day, besides my Joe and the rest of them, they didn't succeed. Oh they were full of it then, how the wonderful police had caught Ned Kelly and put a stop to the gang. Well it were nothing like the truth, you've heard it from me own lips now, years it took, years where they didn't know where Ned was gonna bite them next, the coppers had no hope of catching them until the gang themselves decided to put a stop to it.

But anyways the coppers was intent on revenge for all those years, and once they set the date for Ned's trial, we started to organise ourselves. Meetings were held and lawyers were hired, though what good they did in the end I don't know. The judge never even answered Ned's charges at the trial. Two days it took, the trial, two days to condemn a man to death! And they weren't intending on wasting any prison food neither, he were to be hanged 13 days later on Thursday, November the 11th, 1880. But the verdict of "guilty" well that got us moving alright, all over the colonies we had meetings and organised our people to get signatures on a petition demanding clemency for Ned.

Ah well, you can read all that elsewhere, there are plenty that remember the demonstrations and the procession. We collected 32,000 signatures asking for clemency, which when I think on it now, was a feat in itself. I even spoke at some of them meetings, me Da were so proud, and well I think me Ma too, though she didn't say, but I could see her take his hand. But the law isn't about justice, Joe knew that, and despite it all we were left to simply gather outside the gaol that morning, thousands of us there were, and be a witness to the hour of the murder of Ned Kelly. His last wishes for the release of his mother and to be buried in consecrated ground were denied him in a final act of their cruelty.

It were on that morning, in that crowd, where I was standing next to me Ma, that I was knocked sideways, the coppers pushing and shoving us, frightened they were that we would storm the gaol and take him back, even had extra gates built. Anyhow I were knocked sideways and onto the ground, and I could feel the box I was holding crush under me. I couldn't move for dread of what I was going to find when I opened it…of course it were broken…little pieces of blue shell…the kerloo finally killed off that morning too, but wherever a soul goes to, well at least him and Ned, they went together.

Those next months there were something about us that were left being all together, I saw Kate and Maggie and Tom and even Mrs. Byrne on occasion, something about those that knew them being together, bringing us comfort. Ah and there were toasts and songs to the Kelly Gang every night it seemed in the Commercial, all over Victoria and New South Wales I don't doubt, sometimes I sang them really loud too, and sometimes I just closed me eyes. We knew we wouldn't forget, and it seems that the world didn't either, that's why you are here, isn't it?

Anyhow will yer have some more tea? Aye well I know it's yer favourite after all the time it has taken to tell yer this. You can see the egg now if you want, its here, along with Joe's letter. I don't open that letter much anymore for fear that the paper will tear, and well I don't need to, I know it all by heart, I know the curve and shape of every word, the smell of the paper, his fingers held it and it is more precious to me than anything. Here, do you remember this bit?

_My heart, my skin, my thoughts—they are all red raw, bruised, and in need of soothing. I can't drink or smoke enough, and Christ, I have tried my best. All I can do while I sit here by this godforsaken dry creek listening for sound of hooves or guns is tell you what is in my head. I need to kiss you again, Evie, feel your skin under my fingers, and breathe that warm scent you have._

I always know where it is, this letter...I can't speak a minute…

My Joe, well he weren't ever just mine, he were ours—Ned's, Steve's, Dan's, Maggie's—ah Maggie, well that's where I started this story. She told you how to find me so I could, didn't you say? Anyhow Joe was also his mother's and his sister's, his brother's and his Da's too before they passed on, he belonged to all those other women he loved, and he was Aaron's, I guess he were his too. He were a son of Australia and Ireland, and I wished he'd lived to see the uprisings all over the world, see ordinary shit kicker's sons and daughters like us fight back some more, see how the world changed, sometimes for the better, and I wished he'd seen how him and Ned, Steve and Dan how they fitted into the tapestry of it all whether they knew it or not. Joe belongs to us all, all those lads do, none of them over 25 and Steve, well he were only 19, but they all made a difference.

Me Da, he lived to see a little, and he knew, he knew he had done something by stealing that sheep. He was a union man to the last! After we buried him I came here, worked me passage to America. I can't tell ye the wonder in me eyes when I stepped off that boat, it were like the world was at me feet, no longer just in me head. I travelled west to where we are now, showed Joe a buffalo and all those ranches, showed him the lakes and the mountains and the clean new air. He would have been real happy.

Ah it hasn't been all sugar and sweet flowers, I never got a house with stairs…Christ, I don't think me shack here is much more than me Ma had, and well the Land of the Free, so it's called, ain't so free for some, but I got here, I brought him with me to America. I can see Joe sometimes when I ride hard across the plains, his curls all mixed with the air, his beautiful body braced against the wind, and the rushing speed of the horse…

Joe, he gave me something precious besides himself, he helped me be Evie McBride, be meself. He showed me how to stand tall, like he always did, and walk on this earth like I had every right to do so. He made me grab me life and me dreams and set sail to America. He could do anything, and he made you think you could too. He were a fire that burned bright and if you weren't careful he would light you up too, ha, well you can't say a better thing about a person than that!

I can't tell you…I can't say how much I wish I had one more time to touch his face or see him smile, just one more kiss…It is as keen as a knife still, but once more would never have been enough with Joe Byrne, he always left you wanting more. Aye well maybe I will send some money back one day, have that engraved on his headstone, he would have grinned at that. Will yer write that in yer book?...Ah grand, be good to leave it with him smiling.

People take flowers sometimes to his grave, so I hear, he would like that too…

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